Patent ID: 8611293

Claim:
A method for cognitive radio channel searching, the method comprising: determining an energy detection threshold and a number of samples that will find a free channel in a minimum searching time, based on a number of channels K and a channel occupancy probability π 0 , constrained by a target acceptable misdetection probability and a target acceptable false alarm probability; and searching the K channels with a signaling device using the determined energy detection threshold and the determined number of samples to find a free channel, wherein determining comprises determining the number of samples based on the target misdetection α t probability and the target false alarm probability β t , and wherein determining a number of samples includes solving for a minimum number of samples needed to achieve the target acceptable misdetection and false alarm probabilities t e min ; t e min =┌(ξ −2 [Q −1 (α t )− Q −1 (1−β t )√{square root over (2ξ+1)}] 2 )┘ where ┌•┘ denotes the smallest integer not less than x, Q(•) is the complementary cumulative distribution function of the standard normal random variable, ξ is the signal-to-noise ratio, and α t and β t are the target acceptable false alarm and misdetection probabilities respectively.