1

Primary user detection in OFDM based MIMO

Cognitive Radio
Vijaykumar Kuppusamy and Rajarshi Mahapatra Member, IEEE
Applied Research Group
Satyam Computers Services Ltd.,
Bangalore, India,
Email: {vijaykumar kuppusamy, rajarshi mahapatra}@satyam.com
AbstractIn order to detect the presence of the primary user
signal with high probability, spectrum sensing is a fundamental
requirement to achieve the goal of cognitive radio (CR). This
ensures efcient utilization of the spectrum. Energy detection
is one of the technique to detect the primary users that are
receiving data within the communication range of a CR user.
In this work, detection performance of the primary user (PU)
signal on CR receiver is investigated. In particularly, the OFDM
based CR receiver detect the primary user OFDM signal, where
CR receiver is equipped with multiple antennas based energy
detector. We observe signicant improvement in primary user
detection with SLC based energy detection at the MIMO CRs in
comparison to single antenna CRs.
Index TermsCognitive radio, Spectrum sensing, OFDM,
MIMO
I. INTRODUCTION
The demand of radio-frequency spectrum is increasing to
support the user needs in wireless communication. FCC report
[1] suggests that many portion of radio spectrum are not in
use for signicant period of time and use of these spectrum
holes can be increased signicantly. Cognitive radio (CR)
[2], inclusive of software-dened radio, has been proposed
as a means to promote the efcient use of the spectrum by
exploiting the existence of spectrum holes. The intelligence
of cognitive radio lies on three basic functions: the ability to
sense the outside environment; the capacity to learn, ideally in
both supervised and unsupervised modes; and nally, the ca-
pability to adapt within any layer of the radio communication
system [3].
Cognitive radio transmits on a piece of spectrum found not
utilized by the primary user (PU). Subsequent transmission
from CR should not cause interference to primary user when
PU starts using previously unused spectrum. To achieve this
goal of CR, it is a fundamental requirement that the cogni-
tive radio performs spectrum sensing from time to time to
detect the presence of the PU signal. The sensing of radio
environment to determine the presence of primary user is
a challenging problem as the signal is attenuated by fading
wireless channel. This results in low signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) condition at the CR input, and makes CR susceptible to
hidden node problem, wherein CR fails to detect primary user
and begins transmission, thereby causing potential interference
to the primary user. To minimize the occurrence of this
problem, detection technique has to achieve probability of
detection close to unity for a specied probability of false
alarm and a given SNR.
Many signal detection techniques has been proposed in
the literature, such as matched ltering, energy detection,
and cyclo-stationary feature detection [4]. The matched lter
technique requires accurate prior knowledge about the primary
user signal, e.g. modulation type, pulse shaping, channel
equalization and timing and frequency synchronization. The
sub-optimum, non-coherent energy detection technique is used
only when the power spectral density of the Gaussian noise is
known to the receiver. Susceptibility of threshold to changing
noise statistics, inability to distinguish between PU signal and
in-band interference are the major drawbacks of energy de-
tector. The computationally complex cyclo-stationary feature
detector exploits the build-in periodicity of modulated signal to
perform better than energy detector in discriminating against
noise. However, in this work, we consider that the cognitive
radio uses energy detection technique to keep the complexity
of the receiver low. However, use of energy detector in a single
antenna CR results in poor detection performance at low SNR
region, thereby causing interference to the PU signal. It has
been shown that CR equipped with multiples antennas and
square-law-combining (SLC) based energy detector scheme
offer potential improvement in detection performance [5], [6].
OFDM has been proposed as the best physical layer can-
didate for a CR system since it allows easy generation of
spectrally shaped signal waveform that can t into discontin-
uous and arbitrary sized spectrum segments [7], [8]. OFDM
is also optimum from a capacity point of view since it allows
achieving the Shannon channel capacity in a segmented spec-
trum. Hence, in this paper, we consider the performance of an
OFDM based CR equipped with multiple antennas to receive
the signal from primary user and uses SLC based energy
detector to detect the presence of PU. In a recent study in [9],
the detection performance of OFDM based CR is addressed
for three different cases of primary user signal: a Gaussian
PU signal with known probability-density-function (PDF) and
frequency band PU signal resides; with only known frequency
band PU signal resides; and nally, no prior knowledge of
PU signal. In this work, we provide an alternative approach
of spectral sensing in OFDM based CR. We demonstrate the
theoretical detection performance gains that can be obtained
through appropriate signal processing with multiple antenna
CRs in comparison to single antenna CRs.
2
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the system model for OFDM based MIMO cognitive
radio and provides detailed analysis of detection probabilities.
The simulation results are presented in Sec. III. Finally, Sec.
IV concludes the work.
II. PU SIGNAL DETECTION IN OFDM BASED MIMO
COGNITIVE RADIO
In this section, we derive the detection probabilities of
OFDM based MIMO cognitive radio using energy detector to
detect the presence of PU in a Rayleigh fading channel. We
consider PU transmitting OFDM signal with K-subcarriers on
a bandwidth B. The transmission parameters, such as symbol
period, carrier frequency and sub-carrier spacing of PU-OFDM
signal are dened as T
i
, f
i
and (f)
i
=
1
Ti
, respectively. The
CR-OFDM system consists of Q number of sub-carriers with
symbol period T
s
, carrier frequency f
s
, sub-carrier spacing
(f)
s
=
1
Ts
and occupies bandwidth W. The carrier fre-
quencies f
s
, f
i
and
Ti
Ts
ratio determines the mapping of PU
spectrum onto the CR spectrum window. With the assumption
f
s
= f
i
, the value n = (T
s
(K + 1)/T
i
) 1 is the number
of CR-OFDM sub-carriers overlapping with the PU spectrum.
In the following, we derive the detection probabilities of PU
signal on CR receiver with multiple antennas.
In OFDM transmission, the symbols of PU are passed
though K-point IDFT block and cyclic prex (CP) is added.
The resulting signal is up-converted to carrier frequency (f
i
)
and then transmitted through wireless channel. The l
th
trans-
mitted PU-OFDM symbol is given by
x(t lT
i
) =
K1

k=0
X
l,k
e
j2k(tlT
i
)
T
i
e
j2fi(tlTi)
(1)
where, X
l,k
is PU symbol modulated on k
th
sub-carrier,
generating l
th
PU-OFDM symbol.
A. Single Antenna (SA) Scheme
The received signal on CR is down converted, sampled
at T
d
=
Ts
Q
and passed through Q-point DFT system. We
consider the n
th
CR-OFDM symbol to fall within the span
of PU signals l
th
symbol, such as nT
s
t < (n + 1)T
s
. In
detection of the n
th
OFDM symbol, the contribution of PU
signal in a frequency selective fading channel at the down-
converter output of the receiver is given by
s (t nT
s
) = e
j2fs(tnTs)
L1

m=0
h
m
x(t lTi mTs) (2)
where, h
m
are coefcients of frequency selective fading chan-
nel. Substituting (1) in (2) yields
s (t nT
s
) =
L1

m=0
h
m
K1

k=0
X
l,k
e
j2k(tlT
i
mTs)
T
i
e
j2fi(tlTimTs)
e
j2fs(tnTs)
=
K1

k=0
X
l,k
H
k
e
j2k(tlT
i
)
T
i
e
j2fi(tlTi)
e
j2fs(tnTs)
(3)
where, H
k
=
L1

m=0
h
m
e
j2m(fiTs+k
Ts
T
i
)
. The resulting signal
is then sampled at every T
d
=
Ts
Q
seconds, and the corre-
sponding sampled signal is given as
s
p
=
K1

k=0
X
l,k
H
k
e
j2
pTs
Q
(
k
T
i
+fifs)
e
j2(lfiTi+nTsfs)
, (4)
The discrete time signal {s
p
} is passed through a Q-point
DFT, which provides the signal component on q
th
sub-carrier
as follows
S
q
(n) =
Q1

p=0
s
p
e

j2pq
Q
=
K1

k=0
X
l,k
H
k
e
j2(lfiTi+nfsTs)
e
j
k,q
(Q1)

sin(
k,q
Q)
sin(
k,q
)
0 q Q 1 (5)
where,
k,q
= (
k
Ti
+f
i
f
s
)T
d

q
Q
. Therefore, the received
signal at the CR post DFT operation can be written as,
R
q
(n) = S
q
(n) +W
q
(n) (6)
where, W
q
(n) is DFT of complex noise sequence with vari-
ance
2
w
. The primary objective is to determine the presence
(Hypothesis H
1
) or absence (Hypothesis H
0
) of PU signal.
Under these two hypothesis, received signal is denoted as
R
q
(n) =
_
S
q
(n) +W
q
(n) H
1
W
q
(n) H
0
n = 1, . . . , N (7)
The energy detector forms the decision statistics (E
q
) collect-
ing N samples from the output of DFT block corresponding to
q
th
sub-carrier. The decision statistics (E
q
) will be compared
with threshold calculated for a given probability of false alarm
(P
f
) to detect the presence of PU signal. The decision making
block marks the sub-carrier as unused when the decision statis-
tics is less than threshold value. This procedure is repeated
for all the Q sub-carriers and subsequently, the number of
sub-carriers free for use by CR is determined. Under H
0
, the
normalized decision statistics is given as
E
q
=
2

2
w
N

n=1
|W
q
(n)|
2
=
2

2
w
N

n=1
(|W
qr
(n)|
2
+ |W
qi
(n)|
2
) (8)
where, W
qr
(n) and W
qi
(n) are real and imaginary parts of
W
q
(n) and they are zero mean gaussian random variable with
variance
2
w
/2. Now, we dene Z
qr
(n) =
Wqr(n)

2
w
/2
, and Z
qr
(n)
is zero mean gaussian random noise with unit variance. The
decision statistics is given as
E
q
=
N

i=1
(|Z
qr
(n)|
2
+ |Z
qi
(n)|
2
) (9)
Thus, E
q
under H
0
, can be viewed as the sum of square of the
2N standard Gaussian i.i.d random variable with zero mean
3
and unit variance. Therefore, E
q
follows a central chi-square
distribution with 2N degree of freedom. The probability of
false alarm is given as [6]
P
f
=
(N, /2)
(N)
(10)
where, (., .) is the incomplete gamma function, is the
threshold with which the decision statistics is compared to
detect the presence of PU signal. Under H
1
, the decision
statistics E
q
is given as
E
q
=
2

2
w
N

n=1
|S
q
(n) +W
q
(n)|
2
=
2

2
w
N

n=1
(S
qr
(n) +W
qr
(n))
2
+ (S
qi
(n) +W
qi
(n))
2
=
2

2
w
[R
T
qr
R
qr
+R
T
qi
R
qi
]
=
2

2
w
u
T
u (11)
where, u = [R
T
qr
R
T
ri
]
T
, and R
qr
= [R
qr
(1) . . . R
qr
(N)].
The decision statistics E
q
under H
1
is sum of square of
2N correlated gaussian random variable. The correlation of
Gaussian random sequence R
q
(n) is due to signal component
S
q
(n) obtained considering small segment of oversampled PU
OFDM symbol, assuming T
i
/T
s
> 1. The PDF of decision
statistics can be written as (using (23) in Appendix I)
P
Eq/H1
(E
q
) =
1
2
_

()e
jEq
d (12)
where, () =

N
i=1
(1 j2
i
)
1
=

2N
i=1
(1 j2
i
)
0.5
is characteristic function of decision statistics,
i
are the
eigenvalues of covariance matrix (C
Eq
) of gaussian random
variable constituting decision statistics,
i
are the eigenvalues
of covariance matrix R = [C
Eq
0
N,N
; 0
N,N
C
Eq
]. The
PDF is evaluated numerically once eigenvalues of covariance
matrix are computed. The covariance matrix of decision statis-
tics is given as (using (28) in Appendix II)
C
Eq
=
1

2
w
{C
s
+
2
w
I} (13)
where, (n, m)
th
elements of covariance matrix C
s
is as follows
C
s
n,m
=
_

_
_
_
1
|b|

_
K1

k=0
e
j2(b)Tsfs

sin
2
(
k,q
Q)
sin
2
(
k,q
)
_
|b| 1
0 Otherwise
(14)
where b = n m and =
Ti
Ts
with x being the largest
integer not greater than x. The probability of detection is given
as
P
d
=
_

P
Eq/H1
(E
q
)dE
q
(15)
The threshold is computed from (10) for a given probability
of false alarm.
B. Square Law Combining (SLC) Scheme
In this section, we derive the detection probabilities of
diversity-based energy detectors in a fading channel for MIMO
cognitive radio. In this scheme, multiple antennas are used at
the cognitive radio receiver end for making efcient decision
on the detection of primary user signal. Received signal is
passed through energy detector, output of which is combined
to form the decision statistics. The received signal at the j
th
antenna can be written as
R
j
q
(n) = S
j
q
(n) +W
j
q
(n), j = 1 . . . M (16)
where, M is the number of CR antennas. The normalized
decision statistics for SLC scheme is equal to the sum of the
energy of all the received antennas which can written as
E
q
=
2

2
w
M

j=1
N

n=1

S
j
q
(n) +W
j
q
(n)

2
(17)
Under H
0
,
E
q
=
2

2
w
M

j=1
N

n=1

W
j
q
(n)

2
=
2

2
w
M

j=1
N

n=1
_
_
W
j
qr
(n)
_
2
+
_
W
j
qi
(n)
_
2
_
=
M

j=1
N

n=1
_
_
Z
j
qr
(n)
_
2
+
_
Z
j
qi
(n)
_
2
_
(18)
Thus, E
q
can be viewed as the sum of the squares of the
2MN standard Gaussian i.i.d random variable with zero mean
and unit variance. Therefore, decision statistics E
q
under H
0
follows a central chi-square distribution (
2
) with 2MN degree
of freedom. The probability of false alarm (P
f
) of SLC scheme
is given as [6]
P
f
=
(MN, /2)
(MN)
(19)
Under H
1
, the decision statistics E
q
is given as
E
q
=
2

2
w
N

n=1

S
1
q
(n) +W
1
q
(n)

2
+. . .
+
2

2
w
N

n=1

S
M
q
(n) +W
M
q
(n)

2
(20)
The characteristic function is () =

N
i=1
(1j2
i
)
M
, as-
suming independence and same statistics for MIMO channels,
where
i
are the eigenvalues of covariance matrix (C
Eq
) of
gaussian random variable constituting decision statistics. The
PDF and probability of detection is evaluated numerically once
eigenvalues of covariance matrix and threshold for a given
probability of false alarm is computed.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
In our simulation, we consider the PU-OFDM system con-
sisting of K = 256 sub-carriers with symbol period T
i
= 26.6
s and carrier frequency f
i
= 3.1 GHz. Subsequently, we
consider CR receiver with Q = 128 sub-carriers of symbol
4
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
Probability of False Alarm (P
f
)
P
r
o
b
a
b
i
l
i
t
y

o
f

M
i
s
s

(
P
m
)
SA SNR=0 dB
SA SNR=2 dB
SA SNR=5 dB
SLC SNR=0 dB
SLC SNR=2 dB
SLC SNR=5 dB
Fig. 1. Complementary ROC curves for different diversity schemes based
energy detector (T
i
= 26.6s, Ts = 2.66s, N=10, M = 2).
period T
s
= 2.66 s and carrier frequency f
s
= 3.1 GHz,
and equipped with single antenna and two antennas for SA and
SLC scheme respectively. To show the detection performance
of MIMO cognitive radio, we use complementary receiver
operating characteristic (ROC) function.
Figure 1 shows the complementary ROC curves over
Rayleigh fading channel for different diversity scheme based
on energy detector for different SNR and N = 10. As
expected, the performance of SLC scheme is superior than no
diversity schemes for xed SNR, and N. Figure 2 illustrates
the effect of SNR on ROC curves for SA and SLC scheme
which shows that diversity based energy detector performs
better at low SNR and the difference decreases as SNR
increases for a particular value of P
f
, N and T
i
/T
s
ratio.
The detection probability can also increases by considering
high number of CR-OFDM symbols (N) for forming decision
statistics in both the cases, as shown in Fig. 3. However, con-
sidering high number of N, increases the sensing time, where
sensing time is directly proportional to N. To achieve the
probability of detection 0.9 for P
f
= 0.01, SA scheme requires
close to 40 CR-OFDM symbols at SNR 5 dB and needed
more than 200 CR-OFDM symbols at SNR 2 dB. However,
diversity-based detector requires only 20 CR-OFDM symbols
at SNR of 2 dB and 5 symbols at 5 dB SNR. Thus, diversity-
based detector achieves the same performance with decreased
sensing time. Therefore, a trade-off is necessary between P
d
,
sensing time and number of antenna at a particular value of
P
f
and T
i
/T
s
ratio.
Finally, Fig.4 shows the dependence of P
d
on
Ti
Ts
ratio for
SLC and SA scheme. The CR receiver with
Ti
Ts
= 10, N = 10
considers single PU OFDM signal for decision statistics. Small
Ti
Ts
= 5 ratio implies that CR OFDM symbol takes into account
two PU OFDM signal for xed N = 10. Hence a gain in the
detection performance. However, for
Ti
Ts
= 20, only half of
the PU OFDM symbol is considered.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this work, we considered sub-carrier level spectral sens-
ing in OFDM based CR, where CR receiver is equipped
0 2 4 6 8 10
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
SNR (dB)
P
o
r
b
a
b
i
l
i
t
y

o
f

D
e
t
e
c
t
i
o
n

(
P
d
)
SA
SLC
Fig. 2. Probability of detection versus SNR for different diversity schemes
based energy detector (T
i
= 26.6s, Ts = 2.66s, N=10, M = 2, P
f
=
0.01).
0 20 40 60 80 100
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Number of CR OFDM symbols (N)
P
r
o
b
a
b
i
l
i
t
y

o
f

D
e
t
e
c
t
i
o
n

(
P
d
)
SA SNR=0 dB
SA SNR=2 dB
SA SNR=5 dB
SLC SNR=0 dB
SLC SNR=2 dB
SLC SNR=5 dB
Fig. 3. Probability of detection versus N for different diversity schemes
based energy detector (T
i
= 26.6s, Ts = 2.66s, M = 2, P
f
= 0.01).
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Number of CR OFDM symbols (N)
P
r
o
b
a
b
i
l
i
t
y

o
f

D
e
t
e
c
t
i
o
n

(
P
d
)
SLC T
i
/T
s
= 5
SLC T
i
/T
s
= 10
SLC T
i
/T
s
= 20
SA T
i
/T
s
= 5
SA T
i
/T
s
= 10
SA T
i
/T
s
= 20
Fig. 4. Probability of detection versus N for different
T
i
Ts
ratio (T
i
=
26.6s, M = 2, SNR = 2dB).
5
with multiple antennas. The CR used SLC based energy
detection to detect primary user signal. The SLC based energy
detector provides high detection probabilities even at low to
moderate SNRs. Increasing number of CR-OFDM symbols is
also considered for decision statistics, leading to a increased
performance, but at the expense of increased sensing time.
The investigation also shows the impact of T
i
/T
s
ratio on the
detection performance.
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APPENDIX I
Theorem 1 : Let u = [u
T
r
u
T
i
]
T
be a 2N dimensional real
Gaussian random variable with positive denite covariance
matrix R. Then the characteristic function of y = u
T
u is
given by [10]
() =
2N

i=1
(1 j2
i
)

1
2
(21)
where,
i
are the eigenvalues of R. When R takes the special
form, (i.e) R = diag{R
u
, R
u
}, () can be written as
() =
N

i=1
(1 j2
i
)
1
(22)
where, R
u
= E{u
r
u
T
r
} = E{u
i
u
T
i
},
i
are the eigenvalues of
R
u
. The PDF of y is obtained by Fourier transform of (),
that is
p
y
(y) =
1
2
_

()e
jy
d (23)
APPENDIX II
The received signal on q
th
subcarrier of CR-OFDM system
can be written as (6)
R
q
(n) =
K1

k=0
X
l,k
H
k
e
j2(lfiTi+nfsTs)
e
j
k,q
(Q1)

sin(
k,q
Q)
sin(
k,q
)
+W
q
(n) 0 q Q 1 (24)
The received signal R
q
(n) can be approximated by a Gaussian
random sequence when the number of complex sinusoidal K
is very large due to central limit theorem. The signal and noise
components are assumed to be independent. Let us denote the
event A that the n
th
and m
th
CR OFDM symbols both fall
within the span of the l
th
PU symbol. Clearly, R
q
(n) and
R
q
(m) are zero-mean Gaussian random variable. Conditioned
on the event A, the correlation of R
q
(n) and R
q
(m) is [11]
E{R
q
(n)R

q
(m)/A} =
K1

k=0
E{|H
k
|
2
}E{|X
l,k
|
2
}
e
j2(nm)Tsfs
sin
2
(
k,q
Q)
sin
2
(
k,q
)
+
2
w
(25)
Assuming, E{|X
l,k
|
2
} = 1 and E{|H
k
|
2
} = 1,
E{R
q
(n)R

q
(m)/A} =
K1

k=0
e
j2(nm)Tsfs
sin
2
(
k,q
Q)
sin
2
(
k,q
)
+
2
w
(26)
On the contrary, if OFDM symbols n and m fall within the
span of distinct symbols of PU signal, then
E{R
q
(n)R

q
(m)/A} = 0
with A is the complement of A. Let =
Ti
Ts
with x being
the largest integer not greater than x. The probability Pr{A}
of event A is roughly equal to [9]
Pr{A} =
_ _
1
|nm|

_
, |n m| 1
0 Otherwise
(27)
Thus, the (n, m)
th
element of the covariance matrix of
{R
q
(n)}
N1
n=0
is given by
Pr{A}.E{R
q
(n)R

q
(m)/A} (28)