Collaborative Spectrum Sensing under Primary User Emulation Attack in Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract

Spectrum sensing is the main function of cognitive radio (CR), which enables the CR users to detect the spectrum holes. Inherent characteristics of CR have imposed some serious threats to the networks. One of the common threats in CR network is primary user emulation attack (PUEA). In this particular type of attack, some malicious users try to imitate primary signal characteristics and defraud CR users to prevent them from accessing the spectrum holes. Therefore, an effective defense strategy is extremely important for robust collaborative spectrum sensing (CSS). The current study introduces a new CSS scheme in the presence of an intelligent PUEA, called attackaware CSS (ACSS), which is aware of spectrum holes and actually co-located with the licensed primary user (PU) and transmits with the same power level in a way that CR users are not easily able to differentiate between received signal from PU and PUEA. The idea is based on attack strength estimation, where the attack strength is defined as the channel occupancy rate of malicious PUEA which equals to the probability that the malicious emulator occupies a specific spectrum hole. The proposed approach estimates the attack strength and innovatively applies in NeymanÀPearson or likelihood ratio test to improve collaborative sensing performance. Simulation results are provided to indicate the superiority of the proposed ACSS method against PUEA compared with the conventional method.

Dynamic Threshold Selection Approach in Voting Rule for Detection of Primary User Emulation Attack

“…Whenever the PU transmitter does not send in the desired channel, the PUEA transmits its fake signal to the CR sensors, deceiving them to believe that the channel is occupied by the PU. This type of attack has been studied extensively [8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…A smart PUEA was considered in the case that it is located near the PU tower and adjusts its transmitted power to be the Sharifi and Mofarreh-Bonab. Dynamic Threshold Selection Approach for Detection of PUEA same as the PU's power [9]. The malicious incumbent emulator only occupies a portion of the vacant frequency band and the channel occupancy rate of the attacker was estimated and applied in N-P criteria to improve the performance of cooperative sensing.…”

Performance improvement of multiuser cognitive relay networks with full-duplex cooperative sensing and energy harvesting

“…Finally, we verify the efficiency of the proposed method via simulation results and show that the optimal regulated rate is determined based on the priority of given constraints. the frequency band when the primary users (PUs) give up the channel [1][2][3]. A general summary of radio frequency energy harvesting systems was discussed in [4], including new research, system architecture, useful techniques, and available applications.…”

Defense against Malicious Users in Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Using Genetic Algorithm

“…An innovative technique for the detection of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-(OFDM-) based PU signal is proposed under the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) in [15]. CSS is investigated as an efficient detection method in the presence of primary user emulation attack in [16]. Priority values are assigned to SUs based on reputation results of each SU in [17][18][19][20] to give less importance to the sensing results of SUs with a reputation below threshold.…”