Improved eigenvalue-based spectrum sensing via sensor signal overlapping

Eigenvalue-based detectors are considered as an important method of spectrum sensing since they do not require the information about the Primary User (PU)signal. In this paper we propose a method to improve the performance of the eigenvalue-based detector. In the proposed method, covariance matrix is calculated by a combinatorial matrix whose components are overlapping subgroups extracted from the array of received signals. As a result, covariance matrix with overlapping hasa larger maximum eigenvalue and trace value thanthe one without overlapping. Two near optimum detector, GLRT and RLRT are used to verify our method. Simulation results show that our proposed method can further improve the detection performance of these two detector. The paper also shows the effect of different overlapping methods on the receiver operating characteristic curve.