Radio measurements on a customized software defined radio module: A case study of energy detection spectrum sensing

In this paper, we developed a software defined radio (SDR) system for implementing energy detection spectrum sensing. The SDR module can be used for a wide range of applications. The use of the SDR module is motivated by its high interoperability, availability for relatively cheaper prices and being software independent. Energy detection for cognitive radios is chosen for its simplicity and popularity. However, it is chosen as a representative for a very wide range of measurements and algorithms that can be implemented in the SDR. We have used probabilities of detection and false alarm with the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves as performance metrics for the implemented energy detector. We have benchmarked our findings with an energy detector implemented on a Universal Software Radio Peripheral from National Instruments (NI-USRP). Measurements results for the SDR module are in close agreement with the results from NI-USRP using the same setup and also with the theoretical results.