Multi-antenna assisted spectrum sensing in spatially correlated noise environments

A significant challenge in spectrum sensing is to lessen the signal to noise ratio needed to detect the presence of primary users while the noise level may also be unknown. To meet this challenge, multi-antenna based techniques possess a greater efficiency compared to other algorithms. In a typical compact multi-antenna system, due to small interelement spacing, mutual coupling between thermal noises of adjacent receivers is significant. In this paper, unlike most of the spectrum sensing algorithms which assume spatially uncorrelated noise, the noises on the adjacent antennas can have arbitrary correlations. Also, in contrast to some other algorithms, no prior assumption is made on the temporal properties of the signals. We exploit low-rank/sparse matrix decomposition algorithms to obtain an estimate of noise and received source covariance matrices. Given these estimates, a Semi-Constant False Alarm Rate (S-CFAR) detector, in which the probability of false alarm is constant over the scaling of the noise covariance matrix, to examine the presence of primary users is proposed. In order to analyze the efficiency of our algorithm, we derive approximate probability of detection. Numerical simulations show that the proposed algorithm consistently and considerably outperforms state-of-the-art multi-antenna based spectrum sensing algorithms. •We present a multi-antenna based spectrum sensing algorithm.•We exploit recent tools in compressive sensing framework to introduce this algorithm.•This algorithm considers a more general case of spatially colored noise environment.•We approximate the PDF for the proposed detection statistics under both hypotheses.•We examine the efficiency of the proposed algorithm through numerical simulations.