Cyclostationarity-Based Multi-Antenna Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks Over Correlated Fading Channels

Spectrum sensing is the key functionality of the cognitive radio networks. A variety of methods for a reliable and robust spectrum sensing scheme has been proposed. However, noise uncertainty, fading and correlation among receivers degrade the performance of these methods considerably. In this paper, we exploit cyclostationarity-based spectrum sensing, which is robust against noise uncertainty, as well as multiple antennas and cooperation among users to lessen the effects of these phenomena. In our performance evaluation, we consider Rayleigh and Nakagami fading, and spatial correlation among antennas to study the spectrum sensing method in a more realistic radio environment. Our simulation results show that using three well-separated antennas (uncorrelated fading) is more advantageous than using ten antennas in a dense space (highly correlated fading).