Channel selection information hiding scheme for tracking user attack in cognitive radio networks

Abstract

For the discontinuous occupancy of primary users in cognitive radio networks (CRN), the time-varying of spectrum holes becomes more and more highlighted. In the dynamic environment, cognitive users can access channels that are not occupied by primary users, but they have to hand off to other spectrum holes to continue communication when primary users come back, which brings new security problems. Tracking user attack (TUA) is a typical attack during spectrum handoff, which will invalidate handoff by preventing user accessing, and break down the whole network. In this paper, we propose a Channel Selection Information Hiding scheme (CSIH) to defense TUA. With the proposed scheme, we can destroy the routes to the root node of the attack tree by hiding the information of channel selection and enhance the security of cognitive radio networks.