A Cyclic Prefix Assisted Spectrum Sensing Method for Aeronautical Communication Systems

Abstract

Continuous growth of air-traffic demands new technologies for future aeronautical communication systems. L-band Digital Aeronautical Communications System (LDACS) is considered as a potential candidate for the future air-to-ground links. Spectrum utilization efficiency of LDACS can be improved by enabling dynamic spectrum access (DSA) in the system. In this context, the present paper proposes a novel cyclostationary feature detection scheme based on the periodicity of the autocorrelation of LDACS signals for spectrum sensing, which is key requirement in DSA. A wideband spectrum sensing simulation model is developed to evaluate the detection performance of the proposed scheme. To improve the adaptability of the spectrum sensing unit to variable wide bandwidth, the proposed system uses interpolation and masking based filters that can extract individual LDACS channels from the wide-band signals. Results of simulation studies show that the proposed scheme provides better detection accuracy against the conventional cyclostationary feature detection scheme and energy detection scheme, while maintaining the false alarm rates to an acceptable level which balances the overall throughput of the system.