Superimposed Training Combined Approach for a Reduced Phase of Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio.

This paper presents an approach to exploit the superimposed training (ST)-based primary users' (PUs) transmissions in the context of spectrum sensing for cognitive radio. In the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the proposed scheme splits the spectrum sensing phase into two sample processing periods, allowing a secondary user (SU) to carry out a training sequence synchronization (with a small probability of error) before the implementation of a robust spectrum sensing algorithm that enhances the detection, based on the deterministic signal components embedded in the ST PU's signals along with the unknown data signal. The overall sensing performance is improved using a reasonable number of samples to achieve a high probability of detection, resulting in a reduced spectrum sensing duration. Furthermore, a low computational complexity version of the proposed ST combined approach for a reduced phase (SCAR-Phase) of spectrum sensing is presented, which attains the same detection performance with a smaller number of real operations in the low SNR. In the practical consideration of imperfect training sequence synchronizations, the results show the advantages of exploiting the ST sequence to perform spectrum sensing, thus quantifying the significant improvement in detection performance and the maximum SU's achievable throughput.

On the MAC/network/energy performance evaluation of Wireless Sensor Networks: Contrasting MPH, AODV, DSR and ZTR routing protocols.

Wireless Sensor Networks deliver valuable information for long periods, then it is desirable to have optimum performance, reduced delays, low overhead, and reliable delivery of information. In this work, proposed metrics that influence energy consumption are used for a performance comparison among our proposed routing protocol, called Multi-Parent Hierarchical (MPH), the well-known protocols for sensor networks, Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), and Zigbee Tree Routing (ZTR), all of them working with the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer. Results show how some communication metrics affect performance, throughput, reliability and energy consumption. It can be concluded that MPH is an efficient protocol since it reaches the best performance against the other three protocols under evaluation, such as 19.3% reduction of packet retransmissions, 26.9% decrease of overhead, and 41.2% improvement on the capacity of the protocol for recovering the topology from failures with respect to AODV protocol. We implemented and tested MPH in a real network of 99 nodes during ten days and analyzed parameters as number of hops, connectivity and delay, in order to validate our Sensors 2014, 14 22812 simulator and obtain reliable results. Moreover, an energy model of CC2530 chip is proposed and used for simulations of the four aforementioned protocols, showing that MPH has 15.9% reduction of energy consumption with respect to AODV, 13.7% versus DSR, and 5% against ZTR.