Abstract—Lack of unallocated spectrum and increasing demand for bandwidth in future wireless networks is forcing new devices and technologies to share frequency bands. Cognitive Radio (CR) is a key technology allowing users to benefit from the unused licensed spectrum to increase their bandwidth. One of the main challenges to achieve this concept is the spectrum sensing in order to detect unallocated bandwidths. Energy detector is known for its simplicity in hardware implementation with moderate performances compared to other methods in the literature. This paper presents an implementation of the energy detector based on the calculation of the energy in the time-domain and in the frequency-domain. Both methods were first simulated using Matlab and then implemented and tested in real environment using NI-USRP 2901. Implementation results show a good agreement with the simulation results. 

Index Terms—spectrum sensing, cognitive radio, LabVIEW, USRP

Cite: Mahmoud H. Shehady, Ali Beydoun, and Oussama Bazzi, "Experimental Study of Spectrum Sensing Based on Energy Detection Using USRP," International Journal of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 40-46, September 2020. doi: 10.18178/ijeee.8.3.40-46