Cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks under primary user emulation attacks

Abstract

Cognitive radio as a solution of spectrum scarcity, proposes a dynamic spectrum access which imposes some threats to the network. One of these common threats is primary user emulation attack, where some malicious users try to mimic the primary signal and deceive secondary users to prevent them from accessing vacant frequency bands. In this work, we consider the true definition of a primary user emulation attacker (PUEA) in which fake signals are sent when the primary user signal is not present in the radio environment. We formulate and derive cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) rules for a cognitive network in the presence of a PUEA and propose a new spectrum sensing based on energy detection with fusion centers employing OR/AND logic rules. Simulation results show that our proposed method can mitigate the destructive effect of PUEA in spectrum sensing, compared to conventional energy detection spectrum sensing.