Spectrum sensing prototype using software using software defined radio USRP

Abstract

Cellular networks recently faced an increasing amount of mobile data traffic which causes network congestion. The concept of mobile data offloading has been introduced. Existing literature on offloading mainly focusses on numerical simulation, without actual measurement to verify the findings. The report therefore proposes the development of a USRP and LabVIEW software to implement the spectrum sensing prototype that is capable to evaluate the channel occupancy of a wide range of frequencies to investigate the feasibility of offloading between bands. The experiment focusses on the 2.4GHz ISM band (Wi-Fi band) and LTE 1800 MHz bands, to study the feasibility of Wi-Fi band to offload the LTE traffic. Different scenarios are investigated to find out the occupied or unoccupied channels in the selected range of frequencies. The raw data collected from the LabVIEW is analysed. The results shows that mostly all channels in LTE 1800 MHz band is fully occupied compared to the 2.4GHz ISM band which is 30% and 60% occupied for indoor and semi-outdoor enviroments respectively . The results justifies that that Wi-Fi band is feasible to be used to offload LTE traffics for indoor and semi-outdoor environment.