Lightweight Spiking Neural Network Based Detector for Interweave Cognitive Radios

The major advances in wireless communication technology have led to increased adoption across almost all application domains. However, the massive growth has caused spectrum scarcity despite the fact that many of the frequency bands are not fully-utilized. Cognitive radios have emerged as a viable means to support dynamic spectrum access. Particularly, supporting opportunistic access through passive spectrum monitoring is of great interest. Existing techniques for detecting white space either require modification to commodity radio transceivers, or involve computationally complex models that do not suit resource-constrained devices. This paper opts to fill the technical gap by proposing a novel lightweight white space detector that employs spiking neural networks (SNN). SNN is a bio-inspired technique for creating data-driven models. The proposed design relies on the sensed energy in the medium to determine whether a primary user is active. The validation results using live LTE data demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel detector. Suitability for edge devices is confirmed through implementation on a Raspberry-PI platform.