Detection and Avoidance Scheme for DS-UWB System: A Step Towards Cognitive Radio

Cognitive radio (CR) improves spectrum efficiency to satisfy increasing demands on wireless transmission by dynamic spectrum access without interfering with legacy networks. In 2004, IEEE 802.22 Working Group was formed to develop a standard for wireless regional area networks (WRANs) based on CR technology (Hu et al et al., 2007). It is expected to obtain a broadband access to data networks on the vacant TV channels while avoiding harmful interference to licensed TV broadcasting in rural areas within a typical radius of 17km to 30km (Stevenson et al., 2006). Ultra wideband radio (UWB), a promising technology, has found a myriad of exciting applications as well as generating a great deal of controversy, for its extremely broad bandwidth transmission as well as its revolutionary way of overlaying coexistent RF systems could cause interference on them (Lansford, 2004; Parr et al., 2003). Over the years, the co-existence problem of UWB has been all along a hot topic in the academy, industry, and regulatory bodies. After years of public debates, arguments, and comments, two important solutions to the co-existence problem are made—the policy-based power emission mask (FCC, 2002) and the device-centric cognitive radio (Lansford, 2004; Walko, 2005; Haykin, 2005). So far, several cognitive UWB schemes have been proposed, among which are soft-spectrum (Zhang & Kohno, 2003) scheme and detection-and-avoidance (DAA) scheme (Kohno & Takizawa, 2006). Reliably detecting of weak primary signals is an essential functionality for a DAA UWB system as soon as a primary user (PU) comes back into operation on the operating channels. Two types of primary users are defined in a WRAN which are TV services and wireless microphones (WMs). Compared with TV services, it is tougher to detect WM signals for the following two reasons. Firstly, wireless microphones are low power devices and occupy a narrow bandwidth. The transmission power of a WM is as low as 50mW in a 200kHz bandwidth. When the sensor is several hundred meters away from this WM signal, the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) may be below -20dB (Zeng & Liang, 2007). Another, they utilize arbitrary unused TV bands and are deployed for a short time such that it is difficult for CR users to obtain much information on WM signals (De & Liang, 2007; Dhillon & Brown, 2008). This chapter will concern two questions. Firstly, how to detect the weak primary signals. Secondly, how to avoid such interference from the primary user and how to coexist with it.