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Performance Analysis of the Periodogram-Based

Energy Detector in Fading Channels
Ebtihal Haider Gismalla, Student Member, IEEE, and Emad Alsusa, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractIn this paper, we provide a performance analysis

of cognitive radio systems employing energy detection based on
power spectral density estimation. Specically, we derive mathematical expressions for the probabilities of false alarm and missed
detection when the periodogram estimate is used as a decision
statistic. First, using the characteristic function of the quadratic
form representation of the periodogram, we study the characteristics of the product of the sample covariance matrix of the observed
vector and the symmetric matrix of the quadratic form. We have
found that this product is Rank-1 with one non-zero eigenvalue
and therefore a simplied expression for the cumulative density
function (CDF) is obtained. Second, the CDF is exploited to derive
accurate mathematical expressions for the probabilities of false
alarm and missed detection in both Rayleigh and Rician fading
channels. Also, for each case, we have derived the probability
distribution function (PDF) of the corresponding eigenvalues.
The results demonstrate that the probabilities of false alarm and
missed detection are independent of the length of the observations
when all the other parameters remain xed. The results also reveal
that the considered frequency-domain based energy detector is superior to its conventional time-domain counterpart as it provides
fewer false alarms.
Index TermsCognitive Radio, eigenvalue decomposition,
energy detection, performance analysis, periodogram, Rayleigh
fading, Rician fading, spectrum holes, spectrum sensing.

I. INTRODUCTION
OGNITIVE radio [1], [2] is a promising technology that
aims to make efcient use of the frequency spectrum by
means of dynamic spectrum access (DSA). Cognitive radio networks involve two types of users: primary users and secondary
users. The primary users (PUs) are the license-holders and the
secondary users (SUs) are cognitive license-exempt devices. A
spectrum hole is an underutilized band of frequencies, dened
in time, frequency and space [3], [4]. The objective is to employ efcient dynamic spectrum access schemes to detect spectral holes and avoid interference to primary users. Therefore,
spectrum sensing is a fundamental function within the cognitive radio platform to enable detection and dynamic sharing of
spectrum holes. The problem of detection is treated as a simple

Manuscript received October 12, 2010; revised January 12, 2011 and March
22, 2011; accepted May 01, 2011. Date of publication May 12, 2011; date of
current version July 13, 2011. The associate editor coordinating the review of
this manuscript and approving it for publication was Prof. Huaiyu Dai.
The authors are with the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K. (e-mail: ebtihal.
gismalla@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk; e.alsusa@manchester.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TSP.2011.2153849

denotes the preshypothesis test in which the null hypothesis

denotes the
ence of noise only and the alternate hypothesis
presence of the primary user. The decision statistic is compared
with a threshold to decide whether the primary user is present
or not. The common performance measures are the probability
, which is also known as the probability of a
of false alarm
, which
Type-I error, and the probability of missed detection
is known as the probability of Type-II error [5]. These probabilities are dened as
(1)
(2)
(3)
where
is the probability of detection. An efcient spectrum
sensor should achieve a low probability of false alarm and high
probability of detection. For example, the IEEE 802.22 WRAN
standard [6] requires probabilities of false alarm and detection
of 0.1 and 0.9, respectively.
The main types of spectrum sensing methods are matched
ltering, energy detection and cyclostationary feature detection
(CFD) [7][9]. In matched ltering the signal is compared with a
known template. This method is known to be the optimum technique because it maximizes the received signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR). However, for cognitive radios, it will require dedicated
receivers for each type of primary signals which may not always
be achievable. CFD is applicable when the primary signal has
cyclostationary characteristics. This technique is known to be
robust at low SNRs but tends to be relatively more complex to
implement. Energy detection is not very effective at low SNR,
but otherwise is known to be the simplest and most popular
sensing method to detect unknown independent and identically
distributed (i.i.d.) signals and zero mean constellations [7]. The
conventional energy detector is normally implemented in the
time-domain using a bandpass lter (BPF), a squaring module
and an integrator [10]. This can also be implemented in the frequency domain which requires the use of a power spectral density (PSD) estimator [7]. Existing studies in the literature on the
performance of such a technique have so far focused on the conventional time-domain implementation. The performance of energy detection of deterministic signals in AWGN was rst addressed by Urkowitz [11], and then Kostylev [12] provided an
extended study for Rayleigh, Rice, Nakagami, and other types
of channels. In addition, the performance of energy detection of
unknown signals in multipath channels has been studied in [10]
and [13], and closed form expressions were developed for the
probabilities of false alarm and detection. In [14], an improved
version of the energy detector for random signals is proposed,

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GISMALLA AND ALSUSA: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PERIODOGRAM-BASED ENERGY DETECTOR IN FADING CHANNELS

but only for signals affected by AWGN. In all these studies,

the energy detector is considered with the energy collected in
the time domain. However, in [15] and [16], the frequency domain approach is considered. The performance of Welch overlapped segmenting and averaging (WOSA) method in Rayleigh
fading is considered in [15]. In [16] the performance of a multitaper-based spectrum sensor has been treated. The study introduced expressions for the probability of detection and threshold
determination for a constant false alarm rate.
In contrast to existing work, in this paper we study the performance of the energy detector when using the periodogram spectrum estimate as a decision statistic. The performance analysis is
based on exploiting the quadratic form of the periodogram and
inverting the corresponding characteristic function into a cumulative distribution function (CDF). The mathematical characteristics of the CDF of a Hermitian quadratic form depend on the
eigenvalues of the product of the covariance matrix and the symmetric matrix of the quadratic form. We study the characteristic
function of the quadratic form of the periodogram along with the
corresponding resulting eigenvalues to obtain simplied mathematical expressions for the probabilities of false alarm and
missed detection.
The novel contribution of this paper includes the derived
mathematical forms for the probabilities of false alarm and
missed detection for a periodogram-based detector for both
Rayleigh and Rician multipath fading channel models. In
addition, it will be shown that the considered method of energy
detection outperforms the time domain-based method in terms
of the probability of false alarm. These results will provide
a useful and accurate insight into the performance of this
technique under various channel conditions and operational
scenarios. In addition, the presented models for the probabilities of detection and false alarm can be used in constructing
optimized detectors such as the NeymanPearson detector, the
method of minimum probability of error, the method of Bayes
risk as well as composite tests such as the generalized-likelihood ratio test (GLRT). Also, since the periodogram is the basic
building block for a number of non-parametric estimators, such
as Bartletts method, the WOSA method, and the multitaper
method, the presented model can provide the foundation for
their performance analysis.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II
the system model is described including the basic assumptions about the received primary user signal and the quadratic
form representation of the periodogram spectrum estimate.
In Section III, we derive the expression for the CDF of the
quadratic form through direct numerical inversion of the characteristic function. This section also describes the underlying
assumptions that led to a simplied expression of the CDF.
In Section IV the performance of the detector is evaluated
analytically in terms of the probability of false alarm and the
probability of missed detection. In Section V, we present numerical results of the derived expressions. Finally, in Section VI
the paper is concluded.
In terms of mathematical notations, boldface capital letters
will be used to denote matrices hereafter, and boldface small
letters will represent vectors. The superscript
is the transis the conjugate-transpose, denotes the Kronecker
pose,

3713

denotes the average value and

denotes the esproduct,
timator of the corresponding parameter.
is the expectation
is the corresponding variance, is the magnioperator,
tude operator and det(.) is the determinant. Finally, we assume
a complex signal envelope in which is the imaginary unit. The
eigenvalues of will be denoted by
, a diagonal matrix
will be denoted by
with elements
and Rank(.) is the matrix rank operator.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
denote the column vector consisting of
Let
the received discrete-time observations, which are assumed to
be independent. The signal is assumed to be sampled at equal
time instants within a specic bandwidth and time period. The
observed signal has the following form:
(4)
is a complex AWGN process with
where
is the transzero mean and variance ,
mitted signal and
is the slow fading channel coefcient.
Hence, is a multivariate random vector with the following general statistical properties:
(5)
where
is the
identity matrix and
is the
ensemble average. The periodogram of the observed time record
is given by [17]
(6)
where
denotes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of
at a frequency index of . The decision for the occupancy in a
specic frequency is subject to the sensing threshold . For the
purpose of representing the periodogram spectrum estimate as a
quadratic form, the periodogram can be described as a function
of variables dened as

(7)
In vector notation, the periodogram can be expressed as an n-ary
quadratic form in given by
(8)
is the symmetric matrix of the quadratic
where
form, and
denotes the row vector conand given by
sisting of roots of unity at a frequency of
as shown in (9) at the bottom of the next
page.

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III. CHARACTERISTIC AND DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS

In this section, we derive the PDF and the CDF of the decision
statistic. The characteristic function of the periodogram spectrum estimator can be obtained by making use of [18, (9.35)] as
follows:

denotes
Lemma 1 (Gil-Peleaz Inversion Theorem): If
,
the characteristic function of the probability distribution
is obtained using the form
then

(14)

(10)
where
is the covariance matrix of the vector which is
assumed to be nonsingular, positive-semidenite and given by
. By making use of the diagonalized
representation of the quadratic form, the characteristic function
given by (10) can be written as [18], [19]

denotes the imaginary part.

where
By making use of the quadratic form of the periodogram in
, is
(8), the CDF of the spectral estimate, denoted by
. To apply Gil-Peleaz lemma, the
obtained by inverting
imaginary part of (10) is required. Therefore, the equation can
be further expressed as follows:

(11)
where are the eigenvalues of
of the vector given by

and

are the elements

(15)

(12)
is the normalized modal matrix of
,
where
, and
normalized modal matrix of

is the

Now, substituting (15) into (14) yields the CDF of

is written as

which

(13)

A. Cumulative Distribution
The characteristic function can be inverted directly into the
corresponding CDF by invoking Gil-Peleaz inversion theorem
[19], [20], which is given by the following lemma.

.
.
.

.
.
.

(16)

.
.
.

..

.
.
.

(9)

GISMALLA AND ALSUSA: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PERIODOGRAM-BASED ENERGY DETECTOR IN FADING CHANNELS

The GilPeleaz integral can be improper in one or both sides of

integration limits [21]. Therefore, the following resulting limit
is obtained when the variable converges to zero1

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The expectation and variance of the spectral estimate are given

by making use of [24, Theorem 3.2b.2] which yields
(23)
(24)
IV. DETECTOR PERFORMANCE

(17)
Similarly, when
following values:

, the limit of sine argument has the

In this section, we obtain expressions for the probabilities of

false alarm and missed detection. The probability of missed detection is investigated for the cases of Rayleigh fading and Rican
fading. The probability of false alarm at a specic frequency
index is identical for all channel types, but the probability of
miss will change depending on the channel type. For each case,
will be investigated.
the corresponding value of
A. Probability of False Alarm

(18)
Therefore, the limit of the integrand of (16) will converge to zero
because the denominator is monotonically increasing towards
innity. As a result, the numerical integration can be carried
only within a nite limit to achieve precise results [19], [22].
As we aim to study the probabilities of false alarm and missed
, we need the following lemma.
detection of
Lemma 2: The resulting product of
and
has the following attribute:

and by making use of (9) the eigenUnder the hypothesis

is found to be
value of
(25)
Now, by making use of (21), the probability of false alarm at the
secondary receiver is given by

(19)
is equivalent to
. Hence,
Proof: From, (9),
is a multiple of one independent column vector and have a rank
is non-singular and
is singular, then the rank
of 1. Since,
of
is given by making use of [23, 0.4.6.b],

(26)
Hence, under the assumption of
have the following PDF:

, the decision statistic will

(27)

(20)
Hence,
will have one distinct non-zero eigenvalue.
Using Lemma 2 and (16), the following result is found.
Corollary 1: The CDF of the periodogram spectral estimate
of the received signal is given by

This result can be obtained from (22) as well by substituting

and integrating over , and it also matches the result
reported in [18] for the general Hermitian quadratic forms with
.
positive eigenvalues of
B. Probability of Missed Detection in AWGN

(21)

The value of depends on the covariance matrix

. In this
and using (9), the eigenvalue
case, under the assumption of
is simply given by
of
(28)

B. Probability Distribution
Using Lemma 2, an expression for the PDF can be obtained
by making use of (11). Hence, the PDF of the decision statistic
can be written as

Therefore, the probability of missed detection is given by

making use of the result in corollary 1 as
(29)
In this case, the PDF can be evaluated using (22) and the eigenvalue is evaluated by (28).
C. Probability of Missed Detection in Rayleigh Fading

(22)
1Through

invoking LHopital rule.

Let
denote the channel vector corresponding
to the observations vector , where is a circular symmetric
complex normal (CSCN) variable. We assume that the channel

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is xed during the time of sensing of each observation. In this

case, the sample covariance matrix of is given by
(30)
The elements of are zeros since the elements of are also
. The resulting matrix of the
zeros because
product
can be recursively proven to have the resulting
matrix entries shown in (31) at the bottom of the page, where
denotes the th primitive root of unity. The eigenis found by making use of (31) as
value of
(32)
Let

denote

, and assuming uniform delay proles, i.e.,

, then
. By making
use of the PDF of Gamma distribution [25, Sec. 6.9.1], the PDF
of for a Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated as

(33)

Fig. 1. PDF of the eigenvalue  of 6

different values of .

for Rayleigh fading from (33) for

By applying Jensens inequality, the lower bound for the average probability of missed detection is given by
(35)

and
denotes the gamma function. Fig. 1
where
depicts the PDF of the eigenvalue
of the sample covariance matrix
evaluated from (33) for different values
of . The simulation parameters are
,
, and
dB. It can be seen that the eigenvalue
tends to decrease with the increase of . It can be seen from
this gure that these PDFs have cross-points at particular
eigenvalues. This is expected as they have the same shape with
the only difference being the mean value, and therefore, these
crossover points represent values of the eigenvalue of
that have the same probability of occurrence whatever is the
value of . The average probability of miss is obtained by
averaging (29) over (33) which yields the mathematical form
given as follows:

where

is the average eigenvalue which is given by

(36)

, the PDF of the

In this case and under the assumption of
decision statistic can be obtained by making use of (22) and (33).
Hence, averaging (22) over the PDF of the eigenvalue yields the
following expression:

(37)
Using this result, we obtain an alternative expression for evaluation of the average probability of miss given as

(34)

.
.
.

.
.
.

(38)

.
.
.

..

.
.
.

(31)

GISMALLA AND ALSUSA: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PERIODOGRAM-BASED ENERGY DETECTOR IN FADING CHANNELS

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for the average probability of miss is obtained as the following

expression:

(41)

Fig. 2. PDF of the eigenvalue

different values of .

of

6Q

The minimum bound for the probability of miss is given by

(35) for an average eigenvalue of
for Rician fading from (40) for

(42)
In addition, similar to the previous subsection, in this case the
PDF of the decision statistic is obtained from averaging (22)
over (40) which yields

D. Probability of Missed Detection in Rician Fading

Similar to the previous section, it is necessary to nd out the
probability distribution of the eigenvalue of
and the elements of . The envelope is assumed to be Rician distributed
. In this case, the sample cowith the K-factor given by
variance matrix is identical to (30). In addition, for simplicity
but without loss of generality let us assume a zero-mean pri. We may write the PDF of
mary user signal so that
as non-central chi-square distribution with
degrees
of freedom (DoF) and non-centrality parameter of
.
Therefore, the PDF is given by

(43)
(39)
which can be reduced to
where is the th-order modied Bessel function of the rst
kind. Now the PDF of can be written as

(44)

V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
(40)
Fig. 2 depicts the PDF of in Rician fading channel as computed by (40) for various values of . The simulation parameters
,
,
and
dB.
are
Similar to the case of Rayleigh fading, the eigenvalue of the
sample covariance matrix tends to decrease with increasing the
parameter . Similar to Fig. 1 the presence of crossover points
results from the PDFs getting shifted by the distribution mean.
The average probability of miss can be obtained by averaging (29) over (39). Using these results, the nal expression

In this section, we present numerical examples for the obtained analytical expressions. All Monte Carlo simulations are
independent trials. For numerical inperformed for at least
tegration we have used the adaptive GaussKronrod quadrature
method which is appropriate for improper integrals. In all gures except Figs. 10 and 11, all simulation results for the mathematical models are represented by solid lines, and Monte Carlo
simulation results are represented by symbols. We also compare
between the performance of energy detection in time domain
using the results reported in [10] and the obtained results in this
paper. We present numerical results that show the effect of the

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Fig. 3. The probability of false alarm versus the sensing threshold for different
values of the noise variance.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 8, AUGUST 2011

=0

Fig. 4. The probability of false alarm versus the sensing threshold at f

and
. The surface plot represents theoretical results from (26) and the
overlaid stem plot shows Monte Carlo simulation results.

N = 16

length of the observations vector. Finally, we also compare the

efciency of the time-domain model and the studied model in
terms of detection performance measures.
A. System Performance
Fig. 3 illustrates the probability of false alarm
versus
the sensing threshold for various values of the noise varifor a vector length of
ance . Simulation is carried at
using (26). The gure conrms that the results obtained from the derived closed-forms match the results obtained
via Monte Carlo simulation. It can be seen that the probability
of false alarm is minimized with reducing the noise variance.
The surface plot in Fig. 4 depicts the probability of false alarm
versus the sensing threshold and the frequency index. The overlaid stem plot depicts the theoretical results obtained from (26).
It can be seen that the probability of false alarm has an identical distribution along all values of the frequency index . As
the decision is only affected by AWGN, it can be seen that the
probability of false alarm has an identical distribution over all
values of the frequency index .
versus
In Fig. 5, the results for the probability of miss
the sensing threshold are presented for the case of AWGN
channel. Because of the fact of having one non-zero eigenvalue,
there is only one corresponding value of which was computed via the transformation given by (12) and the probability of
is computed using (29) for
missed detection
and
. The simulation parameters are different values
and . The obtained
of SNR and for two different cases of
results show that the probability of miss is reduced as the SNR
increases.
The surface plot shown in Fig. 6 depicts the probability of
missed detection as a function of the sensing threshold and
the frequency index . The stem plot represents results from
the expression given by (29), which are identical to the Monte
Carlo simulation results represented by the overlaid surface plot.
,
The simulation parameters in this case are
and
. It is clear that the probability of missed
detection has a similar distribution for all values of frequency

Fig. 5. Probability of missed detection

N
from (29).
threshold , at f

= 01

in AWGN versus the sensing

index, except for

(the DC component), which will always
yield a probability of miss lower than other frequency index
values.
The average probability of missed detection in Rayleigh
is numerically simulated using (34) and (38),
fading
and it can be seen that both equations are accurate. The numerical results are shown in Fig. 7 for different values of and
at a frequency index of
and length
. For each
case of , the average probability of miss is reduced with the
increase of . Similarly, Fig. 8 depicts the results of the average
. The
probability of missed detection in Rician fading
numerical results are computed using (41) at a frequency index
and length
. As it can be seen, the behavior
of
of
is similar to that of
, i.e., the probability of
miss is reduced with increasing . Fig. 9 depicts the PDF of
the decision statistic in Rican fading from (44). The results are
and it can be seen that the derived
obtained for
model is accurate. In this gure, the crossover points represent

GISMALLA AND ALSUSA: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PERIODOGRAM-BASED ENERGY DETECTOR IN FADING CHANNELS

Fig. 6. Probability of missed detection P in AWGN versus the sensing

threshold for N = 16, SNR = 10 dB,  = 1 + 1j . The surface plot shows
theoretical results obtained from (29) and the overlaid stem plot represents
Monte Carlo simulation results.

Fig. 7. The probability of miss in Rayleigh fading for different values of  and
. Lines = (34), ` ' = (38) and ` ? ' = Monte Carlo trails.

values of the sensing threshold for which the decision statistic

has the same probability.
B. Impact of Observations Length
Fig. 10 depicts the numerical results obtained for different
. Fig. 10(a) illustrates
cases of N, given by
the probability of false alarm versus the sensing threshold for
dB at
. Similarly,
a noise variance of
Fig. 10(b) shows the probability of miss in AWGN versus .
and
dB.
Simulations were performed at
Similarly, Fig. 10(c) depicts the average probability of miss in
0 dB and
3 dB,
Rayleigh fading for the cases of
10 dB. Finally, the results for the average probability of
miss in Rician fading is depicted in Fig. 10(d). Numerical results
for two cases. The rst case is simulated
were obtained at
,
,
and
. The second case is
for

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Fig. 8. The probability of miss in Rician fading versus the sensing threshold
for different values of  and  from (41).

Fig. 9. The PDF of the decision statistic in Rican fading from (44).

,
,
1.8 dB and
3 dB. The results in
Fig. 10 conrmed that changing the value of for all cases of
the probability of miss has the same behavior as the probability
of false alarm, i.e., the average probability is independent of
when other parameters are not changed.
It is reported in the literature that increasing the number of
samples will reduce the variance of the spectrum estimate, and
thus a better estimate is obtained [26]. However, the authors
is indehave found that the cumulative distribution under
in the paper.
pendent of the observation length denoted by
This can be seen from the probability of false alarm given in
(26). In fading channels, the CDF is a function of the parameters and , and the later is regarded as a projection of the elements of the vector of ensemble averages . Therefore, since
we only compute average probabilities, then the average CDF is
obtained by averaging over , and it can be seen from (36) and
(42) that the ensemble average of the eigenvalue in Rayleigh and
Rican fading is found to be independent of .

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 8, AUGUST 2011

Fig. 10. Comparison between analytical models for various values of observations length
and different scenarios of the parameters for each type of
.
channel. Lines represent

N =4

Fig. 11. Comparison of detection performance in time-domain (TD) and fre. In TD two decision statistics are used (
quency domain (FD) at
x x,
), and the FD case was simulated for
. All cases
and
, (c)
and
.
and (d)

case2 =
 =4  =6

f =0

=2

=3

N =8
 = 1:5

case1 =

C. Comparison With Time-Domain Model

Fig. 11 also depicts the simulated probabilities when two conventional time-domain decision statistic are used which are
and
, respectively. All cases were simulated for
and
for
and
. The Rayleigh
and the Rician case was
fading case was simulated for
and
. As it can be seen from
simulated for
Fig. 11(a) the frequency domain model yields much enhancement in terms of false alarms. Although the other sub-gures
show that the time-domain model yields higher probability of
detection, but it is faced with the higher probability of false
alarm which is increased signicantly (up to 1) when the vector
length is increased.
As can be seen from Fig. 11(a), the frequency domain
model has superior performance in terms of false alarms for all
considered cases oer the time-domain technique. On the other
hand, sub-gures b, c, and d, which show the probability of
detection, demonstrate that the time-domain model has better
probability of detection. It is worthwhile mentioning however

that while the probability of false alarm cannot be enhanced

further in anyway for the time domain method, the probability
of detection can be improved signicantly for the frequency
domain method by using a variety of techniques such as the
NeymanPearson detector [5]. Thus, using the periodogram
method can ultimately be made to provide both good false
alarm and detection probabilities.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we looked into the performance of spectrum
sensing based on spectrum estimation. Mathematical expressions are derived for the probability of false alarm, and the probability of miss for i.i.d Rayleigh and Rician channels. The provided expressions were conrmed by the corresponding Monte
Carlo simulation results. In comparison with time-domain energy detection, we nd that the probability of false alarm at
a specic frequency is not affected by changing the observations length. Similarly, the probability of missed detection is

GISMALLA AND ALSUSA: PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PERIODOGRAM-BASED ENERGY DETECTOR IN FADING CHANNELS

not affected by the change of vector length when all other parameters are xed. In addition, the results have revealed that, in
comparison with the conventional energy detector, the studied
frequency domain technique yields signicant performance enhancement in the form of reduced probability of false alarm.

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Ebtihal Haider Gismalla (S10) received the B.Sc.
degree in electronic engineering and the M.Sc. degree
from Sudan University of Science and Technology
(SUST) in 2003 and 2007, respectively.
From 2005 to June 2007, she served as a Teaching
Assistant and then she worked as a Lecturer until
December 2008 in the Electronic Engineering Department in SUST. Since January 2009, she has been
working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Microwave
and Communications Systems (MACS) group of the
University of Manchester. Her research interests are
in wireless communication systems including cognitive radio, statistical signal
processing, information theory, MIMO systems, and applications of machine
learning for wireless systems.

Emad Alsusa (M06SM07) received the Ph.D.

degree in electrical and electronic engineering from
Bath University, Bath, U.K., in 2000.
He then joined the School of Engineering and
Electronics at Edinburgh University as a MobileVCE
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, working on industrially led projects on link enhancement techniques
for future high data rate wireless communication
systems. In 2003, he joined the University of
Manchester as an academic member of the School
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, where
he lectures on communication engineering subjects. His research interests
include signal processing and analysis of wireless communication networks,
with particular focus on modulation and multiple access, channel estimation,
coding, interference mitigation, multiuser detection, MIMO techniques, and
spectrum sensing techniques for cognitive radio applications.
Dr. Alsusa served as a Technical Program Committee Member of numerous
IEEE agship conferences and chaired the Manchester EEE postgraduate conference in 2010.