Patent ID: 8892050

Claim:
A method comprising: sensing, with a sensing device, a signal in a range of frequencies reserved for use by television broadcast systems in broadcasting television content; calculating, with the sensing device, an estimate of a power spectral density (PSD) for the sensed signal; filtering, with the sensing device, the estimated PSD to remove noise and generate a filtered PSD for the sensed signal; analyzing, with the sensing device, the filtered PSD to identify one or more candidate frequencies within the range of frequencies, wherein the one or more candidate frequencies comprise frequencies potentially in use by one or more wireless communication devices; computing, with the sensing device, one or more test statistics for each of the one or more candidate frequencies, wherein each of the one or more test statistics define a property of the one or more candidate frequencies, and wherein the one or more test statistics include one or more of a height test statistic, a width test statistic, an area test statistic, and a mean test statistic; and comparing, with the sensing device, the one or more test statistics to one or more thresholds to identify those of the candidate frequencies that are actively in use by the one or more wireless communication devices, wherein a particular threshold value of the one or more thresholds identifies a median or a mean of all values of the filtered PSD within a window of the filtered PSD.