Simultaneous Spectrum Sensing and Energy Harvesting

Abstract

This paper proposes a new simultaneous spectrum sensing (SS) and energy harvesting (EH) scheme, called integrated SS-EH, where all of the incoming radio-frequency (RF) power is used for EH. Then, SS is performed based on a fraction of the harvested power. The proposed approach does not require a separate energy detector, which needs a power-hungry radio front end. Therefore, the energy consumption and hardware complexity for SS can be reduced significantly. Furthermore, it can increase the harvested energy over the conventional separated SS-EH scheme, where SS and EH are performed separately, and thus, only a fraction of the incoming RF power can be used for EH. The combined benefit of reduced energy consumption for SS and increased energy harvest allows more energy to be available for communication, which results in an increase of the throughput. The probability of false alarm and missed detection, the average harvested energy, and the average throughput are analyzed in Rayleigh fading channel and compared with the conventional separated SS-EH scheme. A mixed SS and EH scheme is proposed in cooperative SS and EH environment where each sensor operates in either the integrated SS-EH or the separated SS-EH mode to improve the sensing accuracy at the fusion center.