Sensing performance of efficient cyclostationary detector with multiple antennas in multipath fading and lognormal shadowing environments

Spectrum sensing is a key technical challenge for cognitive radio (CR). It is well known that multicycle cyclostation-arity (MC) detection is a powerful method for spectrum sensing. However, a conventional MC detector is difficult to implement because of its high computational complexity. This paper considers reducing computational complexity by simplifying the test statistic of a conventional MC detector. On the basis of this simplification process, an improved MC detector is proposed. Compared with the conventional detector, the proposed detector has low-computational complexity and high-accuracy sensing performance. Subsequently, the sensing performance is further investigated for the cases of Rayleigh, Nakagami-m, Rician, and Rayleigh fading and lognormal shadowing channels. Furthermore, square-law combining (SLC) is introduced to improve the detection capability in fading and shadowing environments. The corresponding closed-form expressions of average detection probability are derived for each case by the moment generation function (MGF) and contour integral approaches. Finally, illustrative and analytical results show the efficiency and reliability of the proposed detector and the improvement in sensing performance by SLC in multipath fading and lognormal shadowing environments.