Evaluating Cooperative Spectrum Sensing: A Hardware-in-the-Loop Approach

In this work, we present a hardware-in-the-loop evaluation of cooperative spectrum sensing using eigenvalue detection. Single-node spectrum sensing is unreliable as it is susceptible to hidden node problems. Therefore, multiple spatially distributed sensors collaboratively perform spectrum sensing to increase the spectrum sensing reliability. Cooperative spectrum sensing is an effective technique to reliably detect the absence or presence of a primary user (PU). Here, cooperative spectrum sensing is implemented on a wideband radio transceiver platform. The secondary users detect the presence or absence of PU signal over the 3GPP extended pedestrian A (EPA) channel model with a \(5\,\mathrm{Hz}\) Doppler and varying levels of log-normal shadow fading.