Hierarchical game-based secure data collection with trust and reputation management in the cognitive radio network

Abstract

In cognitive radio networks, collaborative spectrum sensing as a promising approach is widely investigated for better spectrum management in many emergent applications suffering from spectrum scarcity such as 5G, IoT, Vanet, etc. However, such cooperation is vulnerable to being threatened by malicious users. To this end, we introduce a hierarchical multi-game-based scheme from the perspective of trust and reputation management to secure the data collection process that begins with the spectrum sensing phase and ends with the data routing phase. It is an intelligent multi-dimensional security paradigm where each game layer aims to secure one of the cognitive features. In this composite multi-game model, a penalty mechanism is introduced to contain the malicious behavior as a new security safeguard layer in cognitive radio networks.Extensive simulation results show that the proposed model has better stability and resistance in a hostile environment. Importantly, our model achieves better performance in terms of the correct decision, throughput ratio, and residual energy compared with benchmark models.