Strong Security Approach with Compromised Nodes Detection in Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

Abstract

Cooperative MIMO communication is a promising technology which enables realistic solution for improving communication performance with MIMO technique in wireless networks that are composed of size and cost constrained devices. However, the security problems inherent to cooperative communication also arise. Cryptography can ensure the confidentiality in the communication and routing between authorized participants, but it usually cannot prevent the attacks from compromised nodes which may corrupt communications by sending garbled signals. In this paper, we propose a cross-layered approach to enhance the security in query-based cooperative MIMO sensor networks. The approach combines efficient cryptographic technique implemented in upper layer with a novel information theory based compromised nodes detection algorithm in physical layer. In the detection algorithm, a cluster of K cooperative nodes are used to identify up to K − 1 active compromised nodes. When the compromised nodes are detected, the key revocation is performed to isolate the compromised nodes and reconfigure 50International Journal of Networking and Computing the cooperative MIMO sensor network. During this process, beamforming is used to avoid the information leaking. The proposed security scheme can be easily modified and applied to cognitive radio networks. In such cognitive radio network, if we assume that in cooperative transmission the unlicensed users use one licensed user's frequency, a cluster of K cooperative nodes can identify up to K − 2 active compromised nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm for compromised nodes detection is effective and efficient, and the accuracy of received information is significantly improved.

IDsMA: An integrated digital signature and mutual authentication mechanism for securing the cognitive radio networks

“…Figure A compares the BER of the proposed communication system with the traditional communication system, in which three compromised nodes and one normal node are considered. When compared with the existing system, the proposed IDsMA provides the better performance by improving the reliability of communication with one normal node. Also, the performance loos rate is efficiently reduced because it does not have any diversity with one normal node.…”