Ultra-Low Sensing-Time and Hardware-Efficient Spectrum Sensor for Data Fusion-Based Cooperative Cognitive-Radio Network

This paper proposes a low-complexity cooperative-spectrum-sensing (CSS) algorithm that delivers optimum reliability for the data fusion-based cognitive radio network. Based on this CSS algorithm, a new hardware-efficient architecture of the cooperative spectrum sensor (CSR) has been presented here that delivers remarkably low sensing-time, which consequently enhances the data-throughput of cognitive radio network. For the proposed CSS-algorithm and CSR-architecture, extensive analysis on optimality, computational complexity, detection performance, scalability and sensing-time have been showcased in this work. In addition, hardware prototype of new CSR has been designed in FPGA platform and its functional validation is performed in the real-world test setup. Furthermore, ASIC synthesis and post-layout simulation of the CSR chip-layout are carried out using 90 nm and 130 nm CMOS technology nodes. Comparison of these implementation results with relevant contributions from the literature showed that the proposed CSR delivers
$47.8\times $
shorter sensing-time and
$75\times $
better hardware efficiency than the state-of-the-art works.