Systems and Communications Commons^™

An Investigation Into Cognitive Radio System Performance, Courtney Hardy, Lucas F. Feather, William S. Guy

Honors Theses

The objective of this thesis is to explore cognitive radio performance through an in-depth literature review and an implementation of a software-defined radio prototyping system. Specifically, this thesis investigates the spectrum-sensing aspect of cognitive radio by comparing two spectrum-sensing methods. It was found in the literature review that a system utilizing matched filter detection would provide higher probability of detection in low signal-to-noise ratio environments when compared to a system utilizing energy detection. These spectrum sensing methods were thus implemented and compared in the cognitive radio systems presented in this thesis. Additionally, experiments were conducted to determine the most efficient …