Blind spectrum sensing for cognitive radio over time-variant multipath flat-fading channels

Cognitive radio has more extensive application in recent years, and it may operate in complex wireless environmental condition such as communication systems with time-variant multipath flat-fading channel. As an essential technology for cognitive radio, most existing spectrum sensing methods are designed for time-invariant propagation channel; thus, it could be extremely difficult to achieve acceptable sensing performance when we apply them to deal with time-variant multipath fading channel. In order to overcome this obstacle, we design a novel spectrum sensing method in this investigation. Firstly, a dynamic state-space model is proposed in which two different hidden Markov models are employed to abstract the evolution of primary user state and time-variant multipath flat-fading channel gain. Based on the dynamic state-space model, the spectrum sensing problem is formulated as blind estimation problem. Relying on maximum a posteriori probability criterion and particle filtering technology, a joint estimation algorithm of the time-variant channel gain and primary user state is presented. Experimental simulations demonstrate the superior performance of our presented sensing scheme, which could be used potentially in realistic cognitive radio systems.