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 attack-aware 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 Neyman–Pearson 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Attack strength
• cognitive radio
• spectrum sensing
• primary user emulation attack

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abbas Ali Sharifi

Abbas Ali Sharifi received the BSc degree from Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT), Tehran, Iran, in 2000 and MSc degree from Malek-Ashtar University of Technology (MUT), Tehran, Iran, in 2004, both in electrical engineering. He is currently a PhD student in telecommunication engineering at University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran. His research interests include wireless communication, cognitive radio network, and multicarrier modulations.

E-mail: [email protected]

Morteza Sharifi

Morteza Sharifi received the BS degree from Aeronautical University, Tehran, Iran, in 2006, the MSc degree from Tabriz University, Tabriz, Iran, in 2014, all in electrical engineering. Since October 2014 he has been working as an instructor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Islamic Azad University, Bonab Branch, Bonab, Iran. Mr. Sharifi's research interests span the areas of wireless communications, cognitive radio and wireless network security.

E-mail: [email protected]

Mir Javad Musevi Niya

Mir Javad Musevi Niya received his BS degree from University of Tehran, his MS degree from Sharif University of Technology and his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Tabriz. He is working as an academic member of the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tabriz. His research interests are wireless communication systems and signal processing.

E-mail: [email protected]