Abstract
Spectrum sensing is the first step to overcome the spectrum scarcity problem in Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) wherein all unutilized subbands in the radio environment are explored for better spectrum utilization. Adversary nodes can threaten these spectrum sensing results by launching passive and active attacks that prevent legitimate nodes from using the spectrum efficiently. Securing the spectrum sensing process has become an important issue in CRNs in order to ensure reliable and secure spectrum sensing and fair management of resources. In this paper, a novel collaborative approach during spectrum sensing process is proposed. It monitors the behavior of sensing nodes and identifies the malicious and misbehaving sensing nodes. The proposed approach measures the node’s sensing reliability using a value called belief level. All the sensing nodes are grouped into a specific number of clusters. In each cluster, a sensing node is selected as a cluster head that is responsible for collecting sensing-reputation reports from different cognitive nodes about each node in the same cluster. The cluster head analyzes information to monitor and judge the nodes’ behavior. By simulating the proposed approach, we showed its importance and its efficiency for achieving better spectrum security by mitigating multiple passive and active attacks.
Highlights
In Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), as most of the spectrum is assigned to specific users known as licensed users (primary users (PUs)), the most important challenge is to share the licensed spectrum between the licensed users (PUs) and the unlicensed users (secondary users (SUs)) when the Primary user (PU) are inactive [1]
We use the concept of reputation-based mitigation systems which have been recently addressed by researchers in CRN and wireless sensor networks (WSN) [19,20,21] and merge it with the cooperative spectrum sensing in order to monitor the behavior of the nodes participating in the spectrum sensing process
Securing the spectrum sensing process in CRN is very important as adversary nodes might behave in different abnormal ways to launch different attacks that degrade the spectrum sensing reliability
Summary
In Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), as most of the spectrum is assigned to specific users known as licensed users (primary users (PUs)), the most important challenge is to share the licensed spectrum between the licensed users (PUs) and the unlicensed users (secondary users (SUs)) when the PUs are inactive [1]. As in any other type of wireless networks, CRNs are vulnerable to many security attacks (both passive and active) especially during the spectrum sensing phase. Primary User Emulation Attack (PUEA) in [7,8,9,10] and Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification Attack (SSDF) in [11,12,13] are two examples of attacks, which are unique to CRN. These attacks occur during the spectrum sensing phase They are results of the different attacker behaviors and they both can be passive or active. PUEA is an active attack when a malicious node is emulating a PU, while other nodes are unable to detect it before making their own sensing decision. To the best of our knowledge, the attacker behaviors that may lead to passive and active attacks, which may launch more than one attack at the same time, have not been studied
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