Improved Weighted Covariance Based Detector for Spectrum Sensing in Rayleigh Fading Channel

In this letter, we propose an improved weighted covariance based detector (IWCD) for spatially correlated time-varying Rayleigh fading channel. The proposed method uses adaptive weights that are tailored to the dynamic nature of the channels. These weights can be chosen manually to meet practical requirements or derived theoretically by optimizing some performance index, such that the IWCD outperforms traditional weighted covariance-based detectors (WCDs), which rely heavily on data-aided weights determined by the sample covariance matrix (SCM). Performance merits in terms of the probabilities of false alarm and detection are analyzed in the low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) regime. Besides, the optimal weights are derived via maximizing the modified deflection coefficient (MDC). A reasonable estimator of the optimal weights is also constructed armed with the available samples at hand. Theoretical analyses and experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method over existing works in various scenarios.