Patent ID: 8315571

Claim:
A method of sensing wireless transmissions from a user of a spectral resource, the method comprising: operating receiver equipment within a user equipment to receive signals within a given bandwidth around a given carrier frequency; ascertaining whether the user equipment is readily capable of analyzing the received signals to ascertain whether a signature pattern of the user is present in the received signals; in response to ascertaining that the user equipment is not readily capable of analyzing the received signals to ascertain whether the signature pattern of the user is present in the received signals, performing: working cooperatively with a remote unit to analyze the received signals to ascertain whether the signature pattern of the user is present in the received signals; and reporting results of the analysis to a main node, wherein working cooperatively with the remote unit to analyze the received signals to ascertain whether the signature pattern of the user is present in the received signals comprises: communicating a representation of the received signals to the remote unit for the purpose of obtaining at least partly analyzed results relating to whether the signature pattern of the user is present in the received signals.