On Spectrum Sensing for mmWave and THz Beam-based Communications

Spectrum sensing is an indispensable technique in new radio (NR) and future envisioned 6G communications. Particularly, perception results are foundations of several higher (sub-)layer functionalities such as beam management (BM). Motivated by the objective of enhancing sensing performance given limited sensing resources in an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, novel sensing techniques which can provide accurate results in shorter perception time are of great significance. This paper investigates both half duplex (HD) and full duplex (FD) adaptive probability-based weighted energy detection (ED) techniques, which assign different weights according to the probability distribution of the perceived samples, to enhance sensing accuracy in millimetre-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) beam-based networks. The proposed technique is evaluated in terms of the commonly used probabilities of detection, false alarm, and mis-detection. Results firstly show that the conventional ED technique can meet the sensing demand in the NR standard settings for mmWave, but it does not satisfy the foreseen enhanced mmWave transmissions, and especially THz systems in 6G. They also show that the proposed method fits better in mmWave, and THz systems in particular, in terms of sensing time duration as well as detection performance.