Energy detection versus maximum eigenvalue based detection: A comparative study

Cognitive radio (CR) is a form of wireless communication in which a transceiver can wisely detect communication channels that are in use and those which are not, and immediately move into vacant channels while avoiding occupied ones. In such systems, spectrum sensing (SS) is a crucial operation. It consists to detect the available frequency bands. Many spectrum sensing techniques are presented in the literature. In this paper, we present a comparative study between two Spectrum Sensing techniques: the Maximum Eigenvalue Detection (MED) and the Energy Detection (ED). The performance of these two methods is evaluated in terms of their Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC curves) and their detection probability for different values of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and of smoothing factor L. The results of this comparative study are given and discussed.