Preventing Cognitive User Emulation Attack in Cognitive Radio Network by Calculating Trust Values Using Fuzzy Logic

Abstract

Cognitive radio has proved to be an efficient and promising technology for the future of wireless networks. Its major and fundamental aim is to utilize the spectrum bands which are not efficiently exercised. These bands can be accessed using Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA), by a secondary user only when primary user is not transmitting over the channel. Cognitive radio manages spectrum through its cognitive radio cycle, which performs a set of management functions such as, spectrum sensing, spectrum assignment, spectrum sharing and spectrum mobility/handoff. During this cycle, at several stages, cognitive radio is very much vulnerable to security attacks. This is also due to the exposed nature of cognitive radio architecture. One such security attack which has not been much explored and can cause serious security issues is Cognitive User Emulation Attack (CUEA). This attack is expected to occur at the time of spectrum handoff. In this article the reason of occurrence of CUEA is explained along with counter measures to prevent this threat in the network by implementing trust mechanism using fuzzy logic. The proposed system is simulated and analyzed using MATLAB tool.