Simulation of Cognitive Radio System Applying Different Wireless Channel Models

Cognitive radio is an emerging technology, which aims to upgrade the spectrum utilization by allowing thesecondary users to operate at the spectrum bands vacated by the primary users. A cognitive radio systemmodel was simulated and the performance of the energy detector was evaluated by using different wirelesschannel models. These models include Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) model, Rayleigh fadingmodel, and Rician fading model. The simulation results show that by increasing the signal to noise ratio,the detection capability of the energy detector can be improved and the false alarm probability and themissed detection probability can be reduced. Moreover, the line of sight path strength of the Rician fadinghas a great effect on the energy detector performance. It was observed that, the line of sight path strength(k) of 20 can save the signal power by 40 dB over a single path transmission and 25 dB over a multipathtransmission.