Mitigation of spectral leakage for single carrier, block-processing cognitive radio receivers

Abstract

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a multiuser, wireless communication concept that allows for a dynamic and adaptive assignment of spectral resources. The coexistence of multiple users, often transmitting at significantly different power levels, makes CR receivers vulnerable to spectral leakage caused by components’ nonlinearities and time-truncation of the processed signal records. In this work we propose a method for mitigating the latter with an adaptive choice of the length of the processing block size. With simulations we show that a significant leakage reduction that leads to receiver dynamic range improvement of around 10 dB can be achieved with the proposed method. Keywords: Spectral leakage, Dynamic range, Single carrier block transmission, Interference, White space, Cognitive radio