Abstract

Connectivity in low-density rural and remote areas where distances are long is a big challenge because of high deployment costs and challenging radio channels with long delay profiles. Spectrum sharing can make spectrum available for 5G local network deployments to serve rural and remote areas. Spectrum sensing can be used to complement the traditional database approach in order to enable efficient and dynamic use of the radio spectrum. In rural and remote areas, long range coverage is required in order to enable flexible and cost-effective solutions. This calls for efficient and low-complex sensing methods who are able to operate in those challenging environments. In this paper we study spectrum sensing method called the window-based (WIBA) energy detector in a challenging rural area channel model for 5G networks. The results are compared to that of the localization algorithm based on double-thresholding (LAD) energy detector. Simulations using a rural area channel model with long delay profile indicated that the WIBA method is able to operate in a rural area channel, and it clearly outperforms the LAD method in terms of detection distance. The detection difference was even 15-fold for the WIBA method, depending on the transmit power and the signal bandwidth.