A Sequential Energy Detection Based Spectrum Sensing Scheme in Cognitive Radio

Reliable and swift spectrum sensing is a crucial technical challenge of cognitive radio. This study proposes a Sequential Energy Detection (SED) scheme to reduce the average required sample number and sensing time for spectrum sensing in low signal-to-noise ratio regime. In the scheme, the data samples are first grouped into data blocks and the Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT) use the energies of the data blocks as the statistic variables. The resulting detection rule exhibits simplicity in implementation and in analysis and retains the high sample-efficiency of sequential probability ratio test. The detection performance in terms of Average Sample Number (ASN) is evaluated theoretically. Simulation results are provided to verify the theoretical analysis.