Optimizing scanning strategies: Selecting scanning bandwidth in adversarial RF environments

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the problem of designing a spectrum scanning strategy to detect an intelligent Invader who wants to utilize spectrum undetected for his/her unapproved purposes. To deal with this problem we apply game-theoretical tools. We model the situation as a game between a Scanner and an Invader where the Invader faces a dilemma: the more bandwidth the Invader attempts to use leads to a larger payoff if he is not detected, but at the same time also increases the probability of being detected and thus fined. Similarly, the Scanner faces a dilemma: the wider the bandwidth scanned, the higher the probability of detecting the Invader, but at the expense of increasing the cost of building the scanning system. The equilibrium strategies are found explicitly and reveal interesting properties. In particular, we have found a discontinuous dependence of the equilibrium strategies on the network parameters, fine and the type of the Invader's award. This discontinuity on fine means that the network provider has to take into account a human factor since some threshold values of fine could be very sensible for the Invader, while in other situations simply increasing the fine has minimal deterrence impact. Also we show how different reward types for the Invader (e.g. motivated by using different type of application, say, video-streaming or downloading files) can be incorporated into scanning strategy to increase its efficiency.

Competitive Sharing of Spectrum: Reservation Obfuscation and Verification Strategies

“…How secret communication can be affected by the fact that an adversary's capability to eavesdrop on a collection of communications from a base station to a set of users may be restricted and unknown to the transmitter was investigated in [30]. Problems related to spectrum scanning have been presented in [31,32], where the objective is to develop spectrum-scanning strategies that support the detection of a user illicitly using spectrum, and [33] for detecting attacks aimed at reducing the size of spectrum opportunities in a dynamic spectrum-sharing problem. [34] studied the interactions between a user and a smart jammer regarding their respective choices of transmit power in a general wireless setting, while [35,36] considered problems related to game theory and network security, While these references are not directly relevant to the spectrum allocation problem explored in this paper, these references help motivate the work that we present in this paper.…”