Interference temperature measurements and spectrum occupancy evaluation in the context of cognitive radio

Abstract

This paper presents a refined radio spectrum measurement platform specifically designed for spectrum occupancy surveys in the context of Cognitive radio. Cognitive radio permits the opportunistic usage of licensed bands by unlicensed users without causing harmful interference to the licensed user. In this work, a study based on the measurement of the 800 MHz to 2.4 GHz frequency band at two different locations inside Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru campus, Malaysia is presented. Two Tektronix RSA306B spectrum analyzer are set up to conduct simultaneous measurements at different locations for a 24 hours period. The analysis conducted in this work is based on the real spectrum data acquired from environment in the experimental set up. Busy and idle channels were identified. The channels subject to adjacent-channel interference were also identified, and the impact of the detection threshold used to detect channel activities was also discussed. The consistency of the observed channel occupation over a range of thresholds and a sudden drop has good characteristics in determining an appropriate threshold needed in order to avoid interference.