Feature Detection Architecture for Low Processing Capable Radios

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) promises much better communications quality, throughput, and robustness for cognitive radios sharing spectrum with other (e.g., primary) users. Effective DSA radios will identify any"spectrum space"opportunities that can opportunistically be exploited for communications. For purposes of identifying unused spectrum space, it is well known that cyclostationary processing approaches offer an order of magnitude performance advantage compared against conventional approaches such as energy detection. However, cyclostationary methods are seldom used in practice, especially on low-processing capable, software defined radio (SDR) platforms, due to the implementation complexity and high power consumption required using conventional radio designs. ORB Analytics proposes algorithmic and implementation innovations, including a reduced search space cyclostationary processor and ASIC-based FFT accelerator, that can make cyclostationary processing practical even on radios with low size, weight and power (SWaP) such as those envisioned for DSA.