Super-wideband Spectrum Sensing Using A Simplified Receiver Architecture

Published

June 12, 2025

Author(s)

Yao Ma, Xifeng Lu, Nadia Yoza Mitsuishi, Dazhen Gu, Susanna Mosleh, Daniel Kuester

Abstract

To achieve radio spectrum awareness for current and next generation wireless communication systems, it is critical to develop the capability of super-wideband spectrum sensing with low-cost devices. In this paper, we report a novel wideband sensing structure that uses an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) board and a band-pass-filter (BPF) to form a spectrum sensor, which achieves several giga-Hertz (GHz) of sensing bandwidth and includes spectrum sensing in the 6 GHz unlicensed band as one application example. This structure uses direct radio frequency (RF) sampling with the ADC board, and the BPF passes only the RF band of interest that lies in the high-order Nyquist zone, which is then aliased to the baseband and captured. This method avoids the use of RF mixers or downconverters. To test its feasibility and performance, we develop customized software-defined radio (SDR) functions that allows an SDR transmitter to send multiple arbitrary waveforms on its multiple transmission ports over a large carrier frequency range simultaneously. We use the ADC board to capture several signals transmitted in the 6 GHz band for spectrum analysis and RF parameter estimation, such as the center frequency, bandwidth, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of each signal. We compare the signal parameters of the data captured by this method with those reported by a high-end, commercial-grade spectrum analyzer (SA). The measurement results show that this method can achieve a satisfactory quality of signal detection, and verifies the feasibility of the super-wideband spectrum sensing approach with a simplified structure.

Proceedings Title

2025 IEEE 102nd Vehicular Technology Conference Proceeding

Conference Dates

October 19-22, 2025

Conference Location

Chengdu, CN

Conference Title

2025 IEEE 102nd Vehicular Technology Conference

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Direct RF sampling, Software defined radio (SDR), Super-wideband spectrum sensing

Citation

Ma, Y. , Lu, X. , Yoza Mitsuishi, N. , Gu, D. , Mosleh, S. and Kuester, D. (2025), Super-wideband Spectrum Sensing Using A Simplified Receiver Architecture, 2025 IEEE 102nd Vehicular Technology Conference Proceeding , Chengdu, CN, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960240 (Accessed November 28, 2025)