Title: Sub-Nyquist spectrum sensing for wideband cognitive radios: a survey

Authors: Mohamed Shaban

Addresses: The College of Science and Engineering, Southern Arkansas University, Magnolia, AR, USA

Abstract: In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the recently proposed sub-Nyquist spectrum sensing methods for wideband cognitive radios. Spectrum sensing is a major component of cognitive radio systems where the licensed frequency bands of interest are scanned and possible spectral opportunities are identified. One of the challenges facing the realisation of wideband spectrum sensing is the high sampling rate requirement which cannot be achieved using the state of the art analogue to digital converters. In response to this challenge, several sub-Nyquist sensing methods were recently proposed that aim at acquiring wideband licensed signals at low sampling rates offering feasible realisation of wideband cognitive radios using off the shelf ADCs. In this paper, relevant scientific literature of the recently proposed sub-Nyquist spectrum sensing methods has been surveyed and classified to four classes of methods. The pros and cons of each of these classes of methods are presented and discussed.

Keywords: cognitive radio; wideband spectrum sensing; compressed sensing; sub-Nyquist sampling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWMC.2017.084187

International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing, 2017 Vol.12 No.2, pp.107 - 116

Received: 08 Oct 2016
Accepted: 30 Jan 2017
Published online: 16 May 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article