Low-cost Cognitive Radios against Spectrum Scarcity

The next generation wireless networks are envisioned to deal with the expected thousand-fold increase in total mobile broadband data and the hundred-fold increase in connected devices. In order to provide higher data rates, improved end-to-end performance, low latency, and low energy consumption at a low cost per transmission, the fifth generation (5G) systems are required to overcome various handicaps of current cellular networks and wireless links. One of the key handicaps of 5G systems is the performance degradation of the communication link, due to the use of low-cost transceiver in high data rate. Motivated by this in this paper, we discuss the impact of transceiver front-end hardware imperfections on the spectrum sensing performance of cognitive radios.