Vasicek and Van Es entropy‐based spectrum sensing for cognitive radios

Abstract

Abstract Accurate detection of spectrum holes is a useful requirement for cognitive radios that improves the efficiency of spectrum usage. The authors propose three novel, simple, and entropy‐based detectors for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio. The authors evaluate the probability of detection of these three detectors: Vasicek's entropy detector, truncated Vasicek's entropy detector, and Van Es' entropy detector, over a predefined probability of false‐alarm. In particular, the authors provide the approximate and asymptotic test statistics for these detectors in the presence and absence of Nakagami‐m fading, noise variance uncertainty, and optimised detection threshold. Furthermore, the authors provide a detailed comparison study among all the detectors via Monte Carlo simulations and justify authors results through real‐world data. The authors’ experimental results establish a superior performance of truncated Vasicek's entropy detector over Vasicek's entropy detector, energy detector, differential entropy detector and Van Es' entropy detector in practically viable scenarios.

Keywords

• cognitive radios
• data communication
• probability
• radio spectrum management
• signal detection