One-Bit Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio

Spectrum sensing for cognitive radio requires effective monitoring of wide bandwidths, which translates into high-rate sampling. Traditional spectrum sensing methods employing high-precision analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) result in increased power consumption and expensive hardware costs. In this paper, we explore blind spectrum sensing utilizing one-bit ADCs. We derive a closed-form detector based on Rao's test and demonstrate its equivalence with the second-order eigenvalue-moment-ratio test. Furthermore, a near-exact distribution based on the moment-based method, and an approximate distribution in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime based on the central limit theorem, are obtained. Theoretical analysis is then performed and our results show that the performance loss of the proposed detector is approximately 2 dB (π/2) compared to detectors employing ∞-bit ADCs when the SNR is low. This loss can be compensated for by using approximately 2.47 (π2/4) times more samples. In addition, we unveil that the efficiency of incoherent accumulation in one-bit detection is the square root of that of coherent accumulation. Simulation results corroborate the correctness of our theoretical calculations. © 1991-2012 IEEE.