Reconfigurable Adaptive Channel Sensing

This paper proposes an energy-efficient detection scheme, referred to as AdaSense, that is particularly suitable in the sparse regime when events to be detected happen rarely. To minimize energy consumption, AdaSense exploits the dependency between the receiver noise figure (i.e., the receiver added noise) and the receiver power consumption; less noisy channel observations typically imply higher power consumption. AdaSense is duty-cycled and begins each cycle with a few channel observations in a low-power-low-reliability mode. Based on these observations, it makes a first tentative decision on whether or not a message is present. If no message is declared, AdaSense waits till the beginning of the next cycle and starts afresh. If a message is tentatively declared, AdaSense enters a confirmation second phase, takes more samples, but now in a high-power-high-reliability mode. If these observations confirm the tentative decision, AdaSense stops, else AdaSense waits till the beginning of the next cycle and starts afresh in the low-power-low-reliability mode. Compared to prominent detection schemes such as the clear channel assessment algorithm of the Berkeley Media Access Control (BMAC) protocol, AdaSense provides relative energy gains that grow unbounded in the small probability of false-alarm regime, as communication gets sparser. In the non-asymptotic regime, energy gains are 30% to 75% for communication scenarios typically found in the context of wake-up receivers.