Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Enabled Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) technology has emerged as an enabling technology to satisfy the increasing bandwidth demands of Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) applications. Application of CR technology in vehicular environments is a comparatively new research area and numerous problems still require investigation. This paper reviews existing studies related to spectrum sensing in CR enabled VANETs (CR-VANETs). It also provides an overview of existing vehicular communication standards, vehicular channels properties, sensing mechanisms in CR-VANETs and the challenges pertinent to spectrum sensing in vehicular environments. This paper also aims to identify the open issues of spectrum sensing in VANETs and discusses implications for future research in this area. Keywords—cognitive radios; spectrum sensing; Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET); vehicular communication; vehicular channel properties; Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE); distributed data fusion; cooperative sensing