Energy Detector Design for Cognitive Radio

Applications
(Invited Paper)
Andrea Mariani, Andrea Giorgetti and Marco Chiani
WiLab/DEIS, University of Bologna
Via Venezia 52, 47521 Cesena (FC), Italy
Email: {a.mariani, andrea.giorgetti, marco.chiani}@unibo.it
AbstractSpectrum sensing is one of the key issues in cognitive
radio. Among the techniques for signal detection, the energy
detector (ED) is widely used due to its simplicity. However,
setting the threshold for the energy detector requires some
knowledge of the noise power level, which can be provided by
suitable estimation methods. In this paper, we derive analytical
expressions relating the threshold, the received signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR), the probability of detection (PD) and the probability
of false alarm (PFA), assuming a practical noise power estimator.
The analysis can be used to design EDs that fulll spectrum
sensing requirements in cognitive radio (CR) scenarios.
I. INTRODUCTION
In CR systems the secondary user (SU) must detect, with
high sensitivity, the presence of potential primary users (PUs)
to nd unoccupied bands (white spaces) in the radio spec-
trum [1]. These white spaces are then used for transmission
by the SU without causing harmful interference to PUs. In
particular, in the CR scenario the detection must be able to
reveal weak signals. In general, the secondary users do not
know exactly the waveform transmitted by the primary users.
Hence, owing also to its simplicity, ED is one of the most
used for spectrum sensing [2], [3]. The performance of the
ED assuming unknown deterministic signals in additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN) has been studied in many works
including [4][8]. The extension to fading channels can be
found in [9]. The noise power is an explicit parameter for
the design of the ED. Indeed, these works assumed a perfect
knowledge of the noise level at the receiver, which allows for
a proper threshold design. In this case the ED can work with
arbitrarily small values for P
FA
and probability of missed
detection (P
MD
), by using a sufciently large observation
time, T, and a suitable threshold. In particular, large T will be
required for detecting, with high probability, signals received
with low SNR.
However, in real systems the detector does not have an a-
priori perfect knowledge of the noise level. Few works deal
with the performance analysis of the ED when the noise level
is not perfectly known [7], [10][13]. Detection in the presence
of a bounded uncertainty on the noise level expressed in dB is
considered in [11], [12], where it is shown that detection with
a specied quality is not possible below a limiting SNR value,
even assuming an innite time observation window, leading to
the SNR-wall phenomenon [11], [12].
In this paper we study the performance of the ED with noise
level uncertainty. We derive exact analytical expressions for
P
FA
and P
D
when the noise level is estimated at the detector
side, based on the noise-only observation over T
0
seconds. We
derive the minimum required SNR, given the signal detection
time, T, and noise estimation time, T
0
, and a target (P
D
, P
FA
).
Then, we analyze the SNR-wall phenomenon, and show that
it does not arise when T
0
increases linearly with T.
Throughout the paper u() is the unit-step function, X
CN
_
,
2
_
indicates a circularly-symmetric complex Gaus-
sian random variable (r.v.) with mean and variance, for
both the real and the imaginary part, equal to
2
/2. Also,
X
2
m
() indicates a chi-squared distributed r.v. with m
degrees of freedom and non-centrality parameter .
II. SYSTEM MODEL
Our aim is to detect the presence of a signal in AWGN. We
denote by H
1
, H
0
the hypotheses signal present and signal
absent, respectively.
After bandpass ltering over a bandwidth W, the received
signal is
r(t) =
_
(t), H
0
s(t) +(t), H
1
(1)
where (t) represents the Gaussian noise with one-sided
power spectral density N
0
over the considered band and zero
elsewhere, and s(t) is the bandpass received signal. The noise
power is therefore
2
= E
_

2
(t)
_
= N
0
W. The energy
detector (Fig. 1) measures the received energy over a time
interval T (for simplicity, we assume to start at time t = 0),
and compare it with a threshold [4]
1
:
2
N
0
_
T
0
[r(t)]
2
dt
H
1

H
0
. (2)
After down conversion and sampling at time t
i
= i/W, the
discrete-time equivalent lowpass form of (1) is
y
i
=
_
n
i
, H
0
x
i
+n
i
, H
1
(3)
1
Normalization by N
0
/2 gives a dimensionless metric.
000053 978-1-4244-8201-6/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
RX signal
BPF (.)
2
_
T
0
W

H1, H0
Fig. 1. Energy Detector.
where y
i
= y(t
i
), x
i
= x(t
i
), n
i
= n(t
i
), and y(t), x(t)
and n(t) are the equivalent lowpass representations of r(t),
s(t) and (t) respectively. Therefore, the metric in (2) is
approximated as (see also [4, Appendix])
2
N
0
_
T
0
[r(t)]
2
dt
1

2
N

i=1
|y
i
|
2
(4)
where the accuracy improves with increasing N = TW [7]
2
.
In this paper we assume TW 1, so that the difference
between the time-discrete and time-continuous versions of the
ED represented in (4) is negligible.
Hence, in the following we will analyze the time-discrete
implementation of the ED described by
V
1

2
N

i=1
|y
i
|
2
H
1

H
0
. (5)
Note that, for a given T, W and a requirement in terms
of P
FA
, to set the threshold in (5) we need to know the
noise power
2
. However, in practical implementations we
must generally assume that the ED has just an estimate,
2
,
of the true
2
[7], [11], [12]. In this case the ED statistic
becomes

V =
1

2
N

i=1
|y
i
|
2
(6)
where the distribution of
2
depends on the particular estima-
tion technique considered.
In this paper we investigate the performance of the ED with
estimation of the noise power, (6), and compare it with the
detector having perfect knowledge of the noise power, (5).
III. ENERGY DETECTOR WITH PERFECTLY KNOWN NOISE
POWER
In this section we briey summarize known results about
the ED performance when the noise power is perfectly known
at the receiver [4], [7], [12].
A. Deterministic, unknown signal
Let us assume that the signal s(t) is unknown but deter-
ministic [4]. So, conditional on s(t) the generic sample y
i
is Gaussian distributed. More precisely y
i
CN
_
0, 2
2
_
for hypothesis H
0
and y
i
CN
_
x
i
, 2
2
_
for hypothesis
H
1
. Therefore, the ideal EDs statistic (5) assumes a central
chi-squared distribution in the hypothesis H
0
, and a non-
central chi-squared distribution with non-centrality parameter
2
We assume that TW is integer.
=

N
i=1
|x
i
|
2
/
2
in the hypothesis H
1
. The probabilities of
false alarm and detection are given by [4], [7], [9]
P
FA
=

_
N,

2
_
(N)
=

_
N,

2
_
(7)
P
D
= Q
N
_

,
_

_
(8)
where () is the Gamma function, (a, x) =
_
+
x
x
a1
e
x
dx is the (upper) incomplete gamma
function,

(, ) is the gamma regularized function,
Q
k
(, ) =
_

x
_
x

_
k1
exp
_

x
2
+
2
2
_
I
k1
(x) dx
is the generalized Marcums Q function of order k.
B. Signal described by a Gaussian random process
In this section we consider the case where the signal is a
realization of a zero mean stationary Gaussian process [12].
So, while the hypothesis H
0
is like for the previous section, for
hypothesis H
1
we have y
i
CN
_
0, 2
2
t
_
where
2
t
=
2
+
S =
2
(1 +SNR), S is the signal power and SNR = S/
2
.
In other words, in the hypothesis H
1
the detection statistic V
has still a central chi-squared distribution, but with a different
value of the variance with respect to the signal-absent case.
This description leads to a probability of detection:
P
D
=

_
N,

2(1+SNR)
_
(N)
=

_
N,

2(1 +SNR)
_
. (9)
For large number of samples, N, we can use the Gaussian
approximations of (7) and (9) given by
P
FA
Q
_
2N
2

N
_
(10)
P
D
Q
_
2N(1 + SNR)
2(1 +SNR)

N
_
(11)
where Q(.) is the tail probability of the standard normal
distribution [14].
IV. ENERGY DETECTOR WITH ESTIMATED NOISE POWER
The metric V in (5) requires a perfect knowledge of the
noise variance. In real systems the noise power should be
estimated based on the observation of the received signal in
the noise-only case [13], [15]. So, let us assume that the
receiver has available a number M of noise-only samples.
For simplicity of notation we assume that the samples before
the detection window t
1
, . . . , t
N
do not contain the signal,
so that in the following we will denote n
1
, . . . , n
M
the
noise-only samples used for noise power estimation. Then,
the receiver can evaluate the maximum likelihood (ML) noise
power estimate
2
=
1
2M

M
i=1
|n
i
|
2
. The detection metric
based on this estimate is

V =
1

2
N

i=1
|y
i
|
2
= 2N
1
2N

N
i=1
|y
i
|
2
1
2M

M
i=1
|n
i
|
2
. (12)
First, let us note that the numerator and the denominator are
independent since they refer to different time windows. Then,
000054 978-1-4244-8201-6/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
since the y
i
and the n
i
are Gaussian, the metric

V is the
ratio of two chi-squared distributions, and can be written,
with the proper scaling, in terms of the Fisher distribution
(F-distribution) [5], [15].
In the following we derive expressions for the performance
of the ED with the metric (12) for the cases of deterministic
and random signals.
A. Deterministic unknown signal
In hypothesis H
1
,

V has a singly non-central F-distribution,
while in H
0
it has a central F-distribution [16, section 26.6].
By indicating with F
n,m
(x) the singly Fisher distribution with
degrees n, m and non-centrality parameter x we have

V
2N

_
F
2N,2M
(0), H
0
F
2N,2M
(), H
1
. (13)
Therefore,

V has probability distribution function (p.d.f.)
f

V |H
0
(v) =
(2M)
M
v
N1
B(N, M) (v + 2M)
N+M
u(v) (14)
and
f

V |H
1
(v) = f

V |H
0
(v) e

2
1F1
_
N +M; N;

2
v
(v + 2M)
_
(15)
where
1
F
1
(; ; ) is the conuent hypergeometric function and
B(a, b) =
(a)(b)
(a+b)
is the beta function [16, eq. 6.2.2]. Then,
the probabilities of false alarm and detection are given by:
PFA =

B
_
M, N,
2M
2M +
_
(16)
PD = e

k=0
(N +M)
k
(M)
k
_

2
_
k
1
k!

B
_
N +k, M,
2M
+ 2M
_
(17)
where

B(a, b, z) =
1
B(a,b)
_
z
0
x
a1
(1 x)
b1
dx, (with
Re{a} > 0, Re{b} > 0 and |z| < 1) is the beta regularized
function, (a)
k
is the Pochhammer symbol (a)
k
= a(a +
1) (a +k 1) = (a +k)/(a) [16, eq. 6.1.22], and (17)
has been obtained by using the series version of the conuent
hypergeometric function.
B. Signal described by a Gaussian random process
When the signal is assumed described by a stationary
Gaussian process, in hypothesis H
1
the variable

V has a
central F-distribution [16, section 26.6]
3

V
2N

2
t

2
F
2N,2M
(0) (18)
and the p.d.f. of the metric

V is
f

V
(v) =
[2M (1 +SNR)]
M
v
N1
B(N, M) [v + 2M(1 +SNR)]
N+M
u(v). (19)
The probability of detection is given by
P
D
=

B
_
M, N,
2M(1 +SNR)
2M(1 +SNR) +
_
. (20)
3
For hypothesis H
0
the situation is identical to that in Section IV-A, so
that the probability of false alarm is still given by (16).
For large N and M, the probabilities (16) and (20) can
be expressed through their Gaussian approximation [16, eq.
26.6.13]
P
FA
Q
_
_

M
M1
M
M1
_
N+M1
N(M2)
_
_
(21)
P
D
Q
_
_

1+SNR

M
M1
M
M1
_
N+M1
N(M2)
_
_
. (22)
For the sake of conciseness, in the remainder of the paper
we will assume that the signal is described by a Gaussian
random process.
V. WORST-CASE ESTIMATION ERROR
In this section we investigate the scenario described in [12],
where the noise variance is supposed to belong to a log-scale
symmetric interval, i.e.:

2

_
1

2
,
2
_
. (23)
In other words, we have at most an uncertainty of (dB) on
the true value of
2
(dB). Then, with the aim to get a bound
on the performance, in [12] the P
FA
is evaluated when the
noise power assumes the lowest value
2
/, while for the P
D
it assumes the highest value,
2
, giving
P
FA
=

_
N,
1

2
_
(24)
P
D
=

_
N,

1 +SNR

2
_
. (25)
Although easy to compute, these bounds cannot be jointly
achieved by any limited-support distribution. We will refer to
this as a bounded worse behavior (BWB) case.
In the following sections we will compare (24) and (25)
with the true expressions previously derived.
VI. DETECTOR DESIGN
In cognitive radio applications, to avoid interfering a pri-
mary link, the detector must be designed for a given minimum
desired probability of detection, P
DES
D
, such that P
D
> P
DES
D
,
and with the smallest possible probability of false alarm (other-
wise the CR will be silent too often). Sometimes, a maximum
desired P
FA
, indicated here as P
DES
FA
, is also specied, such
that the detector should be designed to give both P
D
> P
DES
D
and P
FA
< P
DES
FA
.
We also note that P
D
is a function of the observation time
N, of the threshold and of the SNR, while P
FA
is a function
of N and but not of the SNR, and we write
P
FA
= f(, N) (26)
P
D
= d(SNR, , N) (27)
where f(, ) and d(, , ) are given in the previous sections.
Thus, given a detector and a particular performance desired
expressed as a (P
DES
FA
, P
DES
D
) pair, we can nd the threshold
000055 978-1-4244-8201-6/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

and the minimum SNR, SNR

min
, fullling the specica-
tions by inverting the probability of detection and false-alarm
formulas. Let us now discuss two different cases.
1) Design an ED fullling both P
FA
and P
D
:
_
P
FA
< P
DES
FA
P
D
> P
DES
D
. (28)
Here the threshold and the minimum required SNR
fullling (28) are given by

= f
1
(P
DES
FA
; N) (29)
SNR
min
= d
1
(P
DES
D
;

, N). (30)
2) Design an ED fullling the constraint
P
D
> P
DES
D
for SNR > SNR
min
(31)
Here the threshold is

= d
1
(P
DES
D
; SNR
min
, N) (32)
resulting in P
FA
= f(

, N). Clearly, increasing N will

decrease P
FA
.
For example, in the perfect knowledge of the noise power
case, from (7) and (9), the SNR
min
can be expressed as
SNR
min
=
Inv

_
N, P
DES
FA
_
Inv

_
N, P
DES
D
_ 1 (33)
where Inv

(, ) is the inverse gamma regularized function (if

z =

(a, w), then w = Inv

(a, z)). Instead, for the estimated-

noise detector

V , the inversion of (16) and (20) leads to
SNR
min
=
D F
F (1 D)
(34)
where F = Inv

B
_
M, N, P
DES
FA
_
, D = Inv

B
_
M, N, P
DES
D
_
and Inv

B(, , ) is an inverse beta regularized function (if w =

B(a, b, z), then z = Inv

B(a, b, w)).
In the bounded worse-behavior case, we obtain the rela-
tion:
SNR
min
=
2
Inv

_
N, P
DES
FA
_
Inv

_
N, P
DES
D
_ 1 (35)
Note that all expressions given are easily computed by using
common mathematical software.
VII. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section we show some examples of ED design
and performance losses due to noise power estimation and
threshold mismatch.
In Fig. 2 we design an ED giving P
DES
FA
= 1P
DES
D
= 10
1
using the approach 1) in Section VI. Here we report the
minimum SNR as a function of the number of received
samples N. The EDs considered are indicated as ideal ED
(curves obtained by using (33)) and the ED with estimated
noise power (ENP) (curves obtained with (34)). The noise
estimation is obtained with M = N, M = N/10, M = 100,
M = 500 and M = 1000 samples. From this gure we see
that using the ideal ED or the ENP, with the number of samples
10 100 1000 10000 1e+05 1e+06
-20
0
Ideal ED
ENP, M = N
ENP, M = N/10
ENP, M = 1000
ENP, M = 500
ENP, M = 100
N = TW
S
N
R
m
i
n
(
d
B
)
BWB
Fig. 2. Minimum SNR as a function of the number of received samples N
for P
DES
FA
= 1 P
DES
D
= 10
1
. Comparison between the ideal ED and the
ED with estimated noise power (ENP). Noise estimation with M = N, M =
N/10, M = 100, M = 500 and M = 1000 samples. An example of the
bounded worse behavior (BWB) case, with = 1 dB, is also shown.
collected M proportional to N (i.e., T
0
T), the minimum
SNR tolerated can be lowered increasing the observation time
T with an asymptotical slope of about 5 dB/decade. Note that
as expected the ENP-ED has always an higher SNR
min
than
the ideal ED. For instance, if M = N, for low SNR values, the
ENP-ED has a loss of 1.5 dB with respect to the ideal ED.
If M assumes a constant value, the SNR-wall phenomenon
occurs, i.e., SNR
min
tends to a constant value, under which
is impossible to achieve (P
DES
FA
, P
DES
D
) even increasing N.
Note that the lower is M the higher is the SNR-wall. For
comparison, an example of the BWB case (obtained by using
(24), (25)), with = 1 dB, is also shown.
In Fig. 3 we compare the thresholds required for P
DES
FA
=
0.1 for the ideal ED and for the ENP-ED. As we can see
the ideal ED statistics provides threshold values that differs
from those necessary in the ENP case. Then, the design of
the threshold of ENP-ED using ideal ED statistic leads to an
incorrect design as shown in Fig. 4. In this gure, we compare
the P
FA
and P
D
for the ideal ED, and for the ENP-ED with
mismatched threshold (i.e., the same threshold of the ideal
ED), in a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) design case. As
can be seen, the performance of the ENP-ED with the wrong
threshold exhibits poor performance both in terms of P
FA
,
that rises from 0.1 to 0.37, and P
D
which decreases from
0.95 (ideal ED) to 0.7 (ENPMT-ED) at SNR = 10 dB.
In CR systems, xing the probability of detection can be
more appropriate than the CFAR design strategy because of
the need to minimize interference with the PUs. Even in this
case, an accurate design for practical ED implementation is
required. In Fig. 5 the performance of an ideal ED compared
with an ENMPT-ED (i.e., the threshold is the same of the
ideal one) and an ENP-ED with the proper threshold, are
reported. As a target performance we consider a P
DES
D
= 0.9
at SNR = 15 dB, that is a realistic requirement for the
IEEE 802.22 standard. Note that the threshold mismatch
decrease the detection probability and thus a proper design
in the ENP case is required.
000056 978-1-4244-8201-6/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
100 10000 1e+06
1
10
100
Ideal ED
ENP, M = N
ENP, M = 10

/
2
N
N = TW
Fig. 3. Normalized thresholds as a function of the number of received
samples N for P
DES
FA
= 0.1. Thresholds refer to the ideal ED, and to the ED
with estimated noise power (ENP) for M = 10 and M = N.
VIII. CONCLUSION
Designing the ED requires a great care due to the rela-
tionships between the noise power (or the accuracy of its
estimation), the probability of false alarm, the probability of
detection, and the threshold. We derived exact and easy to
use expressions relating all these quantities for applications to
spectrum sensing in cognitive radio.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The research was funded under the EU-FP7: ICT cluster,
by the EUWB project (FP7-ICT-215669).
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-30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
P
FA
Ideal ED
P
D
Ideal ED
P
FA
ENPMT
P
D
ENPMT
P
D
ENP
SNR (dB)
P
F
A
,
P
D
Fig. 4. P
FA
and P
D
as functions of the SNR for ED with different choices
of the threshold and N = 1000. Ideal ED: corresponding threshold set to
give P
FA
= 0.1. ENPMT: ED with ENP and with the same threshold of
the ideal ED (mismatched threshold). ENP: ED with ENP and corresponding
threshold set to give P
FA
= 0.1. For ENP M = 100.
-30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
P
FA
Ideal ED
P
D
Ideal ED
P
FA
ENPMT
P
D
ENPMT
P
FA
ENP
P
D
ENP
SNR (dB)
P
F
A
,
P
D
Fig. 5. P
FA
and P
D
as functions of the SNR for different choices of
the threshold and N = 6750. Ideal ED: corresponding threshold set to give
P
DES
D
= 0.9 at SNR = 15 dB. ENPMT: ED with ENP and with the same
threshold of the ideal ED (mismatched threshold). ENP: ED with ENP and
corresponding threshold set to give P
DES
D
= 0.9 at SNR = 15 dB. For ENP
M = 1000.
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