Robust cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks under multiple smart primary user emulation attacks

Abstract

Cooperative spectrum sensing which is an effective method to improve the detection performance in cognitive radio (CR), imposes some threats to the network. One of these common threats is primary user emulation attack (PUEA), where some malicious users try to mimic the primary signal and deceive secondary users to prevent them from accessing the vacant frequency. Here, we propose a cooperative spectrum sensing scheme for CR networks in the presence of multiple smart PUEAs with spectrum sensing capability. In the proposed scheme, the sensing information of multiple smart PUEAs is combined at the attacker's fusion center (FC) and PUEAs operate based on the decision made at FC. Moreover, the sensing information of different CRs is optimally combined at the FC so as to maximize the cognitive signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (CSINR). Comparative simulation results validate the superiority of our proposed method in terms of detection accuracy compared to conventional methods.