Throughput performance under primary user emulation attack in cognitive radio networks

Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks imposes some security threats to the secondary users (SUs) such as primary user emulation attack (PUEA). In the present paper, throughput of an SU is studied for cognitive radio network under PUEA where SU spectrum access is hybrid, ie, either in overlay mode or in underlay mode. A novel analytical expression for throughput of an SU in presence of PUEA is developed. Impact of several parameters such as sensing time, attacker strength, attacker's presence probabilities, maximum allowable SU transmit power, and tolerable interference limit at primary user on the throughput of an SU is investigated. The throughput performance under PUEA and without PUEA is compared.     

Cooperative spectrum sensing in the presence of primary user emulation attack in cognitive radio network: multi-level hypotheses test approach

The inherent nature of cognitive radio (CR) networks has brought new threats to wireless communications. Primary user emulation attack (PUEA) has been widely studied as a serious threat to cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) in CR networks. In PUEA, a malicious user can obstruct CR users from accessing idle frequency bands by imitating licensed primary user (PU) signal characteristics. The present study introduces a new CSS scheme in the presence of a malicious PUEA based on multi-level hypothesis testing (MLHT). In the proposed method, generalizing from binary hypothesis testing to MLHT, we partition the decision space to four decision options and apply minimum Bayes cost criteria to determine the channel status. We also discuss practical limitation issues that need to be considered when applying the MLHT approach. Simulation results are provided to indicate the performance improvement of the proposed MLHT method against PUEA, compared with the conventional method.     

基于CSS的认知无线电网络PUEA检测和缓解

针对认知无线电网络中的主用户仿真攻击问题,提出了一种基于能量检测的协作频谱感知方法.首先,假设存在一个智能攻击者,它能知道自己所处环境并可以选择不同的传输策略.然后,调整CSS规则和相关参数为能量探测器确定合适且有效的阈值.最后,利用Neyman-Pearson准则进行能量检测,从而检测出恶意攻击.仿真结果表明,相比传统的基于能量检测的频谱感知方法,该方法可以更好地减轻PUEA在频谱感知中的破坏作用.     

Throughput of cognitive radio networks with improved energy detector under security threats

Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) is subjected to some security threats such as primary user emulation (PUE) attack and spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack. In PUE attack, a malicious user (MU_PUE) transmits an emulated primary signal throughout the spectrum sensing interval to secondary users (SUs) to forestall them from accessing the primary user (PU) spectrum bands. In SSDF attack, malicious users (MU_SSDF) intentionally report false sensing decisions to the fusion center (FC) to influence the overall decision. While most of the existing literatures have studied the effects of these 2 types of attacks separately, the present paper evaluates the secondary network performance in terms of throughput under both the PUE and SSDF attacks with improved energy detectors (IEDs) where SU's spectrum access is hybrid, ie, either in overlay or in underlay mode. An analytical expression on throughput of SU under the simultaneous influence of both of these attacks is developed. Impact of several parameters such as IED parameter, attacker probabilities, and attacker strength on the throughput of SU is investigated. Performance of the present scheme is also compared with only PUE and only SSDF attacks. A simulation test bed is developed in MATLAB to validate our analytical results.     

协作频谱感知在认知网络中的应用

认知无线电能够灵敏感知周围环境的变化,通过频谱感知功能发现频谱空洞,使得认知无线电能够与周围通信环境相适应。在认知无线电网络中,认知用户（次用户）必须连续地监控频谱,检测主用户是否存在。如果主用户存在,次用户必须尽快地退出该频段,从而不影响主用户。在文中采用一种协作机制,即两用户进行协作频谱感知,从而提高主用户的检测率,减少了检测时间,并且得到捷变增益。我们用Matlab给出仿真结果。     

Defense against Primary User Emulation Attacks in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology that can alleviate the spectrum shortage problem by enabling unlicensed users equipped with CRs to coexist with incumbent users in licensed spectrum bands while causing no interference to incumbent communications. Spectrum sensing is one of the essential mechanisms of CRs and its operational aspects are being investigated actively. However, the security aspects of spectrum sensing have garnered little attention. In this paper, we identify a threat to spectrum sensing, which we call the primary user emulation (PUE) attack. In this attack, an adversary's CR transmits signals whose characteristics emulate those of incumbent signals. The highly flexible, software-based air interface of CRs makes such an attack possible. Our investigation shows that a PUE attack can severely interfere with the spectrum sensing process and significantly reduce the channel resources available to legitimate unlicensed users. To counter this threat, we propose a transmitter verification scheme, called LocDef (localization-based defense), which verifies whether a given signal is that of an incumbent transmitter by estimating its location and observing its signal characteristics. To estimate the location of the signal transmitter, LocDef employs a non-interactive localization scheme. Our security analysis and simulation results suggest that LocDef is effective in identifying PUE attacks under certain conditions.     

基于簇的分布式认知无线电网络安全体系结构

针对认知无线电网络中出现的模仿主用户攻击和自私行为攻击问题,提出一种基于簇的分布式认知无线电网络安全体系结构.这种安全体系结构通过采用数据加密和认证等安全技术解决无线网络中原有的安全问题,通过在主用户基站与认知用户间使用Hash匹配技术可解决模仿主用户攻击问题,通过簇头向目的节点发送转发节点的可用频谱信息可解决自私行为攻击问题.由分析可知该安全体系结构是安全、高效和可行的.     

合作频谱感知安全技术研究

频谱感知是认知无线电实现动态频谱接入的前提和关键技术。由于阴影效应和多径衰落等因素,单个认知用户的频谱感知的结果可能不可靠,因此通过多个认知用户检测结果的融合来提高频谱感知的性能,即合作频谱感知。目前,合作频谱感知存在两类安全威胁：主用户假冒攻击（IE,Incumbent Emulation）和频谱感知数据篡改攻击（SSDF,Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification）。由于这两种攻击的存在,将会大大降低频谱感知的性能,减少认知用户接入空闲授权频段的机会。因此,有必要对这两类攻击开展相关的防御技术研究。     

一种基于传输成功率的自适应传输策略

在认知无线电网络中,识别用户可以机会接入分配给主用户的频谱。在满足感知时间需求的情况下,如何能让识别用户跟踪主用户的活动状况,从而减少对主用户的干扰,并同时最大化识别用户的数据吞吐量。针对这个问题提出了一种基于传输成功率的自适应传输策略(ATS-SR),识别用户以自适应帧为单位去监测信道状况和传输数据。仿真结果表明,与文献[2]相比,ATS-SR在不降低吞吐量的情况下可以显著减少对主用户的干扰。     

集中式双非参量累积和的合作频谱感知技术

针对认知无线电网络频谱感知的检测时延降低问题，提出了一种采用双非参量累积和的合作频谱感知方法。在单主用户认知网络中，本地认知用户执行非参量累积和算法，处理能量观测数据，以缩短检测时延，减少对主用户先验信息的需求，同时为了降低带宽开销，只向融合中心传输1比特的预判决结果。融合中心在噪声干扰下接收融合预判决结果，执行非参量累积和算法，累加判决统计量，对主用户信号是否存在进行最终判决。仿真结果表明，在10%的虚警概率下，相比于传统的非参量合作频谱感知算法，双非参量累积和算法具有较低的检测延迟。      

Short-range cognitive radio network: system architecture and MAC protocol for coexistence with legacy WLAN

To increase possible data transmission rate and to provide non-primary user’s desired throughput in short-range communications, in this paper we propose new cognitive radio (CR) network architecture with the coexistence with the legacy IEEE 802.11 WLAN. The legacy WLAN ISM band channel is mostly used for common control channel for cognitive operation on the licensed bands to manage CR devices when they join the network and to announce the utilization of the licensed band or primary system appearance on the current used channels. The proposed CR-WLAN MAC protocol is designed to accommodate new CR related features in the proposed network architecture and it has backward compatibility to the legacy WLAN system: (1) Network entry procedure is modified to inform CR users the current licensed band status and to manage CR user group separately by AP; (2) During the operation, two types of CR beacon multicasting mechanisms are proposed, CR beacons help CR users to decide its service change or spectrum handover and to immediately evacuate from the current used channel when primary signal is detected, (3) When the CR user need to change the serving CR AP, not only the beacon frame body of neighbor APs but also the licensed and unlicensed band status is delivered to CR node to search the target CR-WLAN AP fast and (4) A new type of hidden node problem is introduced that focuses on possible signal collisions between incumbent devices and cognitive radio CR-WLAN devices, and a simple and efficient sensing information exchange mechanism between neighbor APs is proposed. The simulation results show that the proposed CR system can provide reliable protection to primary systems, as well as efficient utilization of given licensed spectrum resources, in which the network throughput can be greatly enhanced.     

Distributed power control algorithm for cognitive radios with primary protection via spectrum sensing under user mobility

Substantial spectrum gains have been demonstrated with the introduction of cognitive radio however; such gains are usually short lived due to the increased level of interference to licensed users of the spectrum. The interference management problem is herein tackled from the transmitter power control perspective so that transmissions by cognitive radio network does not violate the interference threshold levels at the primary users as well as maintain the QoS requirements of cognitive radio users. We model the cognitive radio network for mobile and immobile users and propose algorithms exploiting primary radio environment knowledge (spectrum use), called power control with primary protection via spectrum sensing. The algorithm is briefly introduced for time invariant systems and demonstrated that it has the ability to satisfy tight QoS constraints for cognitive radios as well as meet the interference constraints for licensed users. We, however, further show that such assumption of terminal immobility in the power control algorithm would fail in cases where user mobility is considered, resulting in increased levels of interference to the primary as well as increased outages in cognitive radio network. We model the link gain evolution process as a distance dependent shadow fading process and scale-up the target signal to interference ratio to cope with user mobility. Since mobility driven power control algorithms for cognitive radios have not been investigated before, we therefore, propose a mobility driven power control framework for cognitive radios based on spectrum sensing, which ensures that the interference limit at the primary receiver is unperturbed at all times, while concurrently maintaining the QoS within the cognitive radio network as compared to static user cases. We also corroborate our algorithms with proof of convergence.     

A smart spectrum utilization approach using multiantenna‐based cognitive relays in cognitive radio network

Efficient spectrum utilization is a promising technique for a prolonged unused radio frequency (RF) spectrum in a wireless network. In this paper, an adaptive spectrum sharing cognitive radio (CR) network has been proposed consisting of a primary user (PU) and secondary user transmitter (SU ? Tx) that communicates with secondary user receiver (SU ? Rx) via multiantenna‐based proactive decode‐and‐forward (DF) relay selection scheme. In our model, strategically an adaptable joint venture on underlay/overlay protocol is defined based on channel occupancy using spectrum sensing technique. Here, secondary transmitters (i.e., source transmitter) continuously sense the PU activities by energy detector and can simultaneously transmit to secondary receivers. Depending on sensing result secondary transmitters automatically switches in underlay mode if PU is active otherwise operates in overlay mode. The advantage of this scheme is that the joint mode of transmission allows the SUs to maximize their transmission rate. The outage performance at SU ? Rx and closed‐form expressions of joint underlay/overlay protocol has been evaluated. The power control policies at different transmitter nodes are taken care of. With the same diversity order, a trade‐off between multiantenna and multirelay is shown. This comparison shows improvement in outage behavior when the count in relays surpasses the number of antennas. Finally, the analytical model of smart efficient spectrum utilization without harming license users in CR is validated by MATLAB simulation.     

Spatiotemporal Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio networks need to continuously monitor spectrum to detect the presence of the licensed users. In this paper, we have exploited spatial diversity in multiuser networks to improve the spectrum sensing capabilities of centralized cognitive radio (CR) networks. We develop a fixed and a variable relay sensing scheme. The fixed relay scheme employs a relay that has a fixed location to help the cognitive network base station detect the presence of the primary user. The variable relay sensing scheme employs cognitive users distributed at various locations as relays to sense data and to improve the detection capabilities. This effectively reduces the average detection time by exploiting spatial diversity inherent in multiuser networks. Finally, we study the network outage probabilities to compare the performances of the fixed and variable relay schemes.     

On co-channel and adjacent channel interference mitigation in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) is an emerging wireless communications paradigm of sharing spectrum among licensed (or, primary) and unlicensed (or, CR) users. In CR networks, interference mitigation is crucial not only for primary user protection, but also for the quality of service of CR user themselves. In this paper, we consider the problem of interference mitigation via channel assignment and power allocation for CR users. A cross-layer optimization framework for minimizing both co-channel and adjacent channel interference is developed; the latter has been shown to have considerable impact in practical systems. Cooperative spectrum sensing, opportunistic spectrum access, channel assignment, and power allocation are considered in the problem formulation. We propose a reformulation–linearization technique (RLT) based centralized algorithm, as well as a distributed greedy algorithm that uses local information for near-optimal solutions. Both algorithms are evaluated with simulations and are shown quite effective for mitigating both types of interference and achieving high CR network capacity.     

基于加权平均一致算法的宽带压缩频谱感知

在认知无线电(CR)网络中进行频谱共享接入,首要的任务是进行频谱感知,并发现频谱空洞。基于认知无线网络中信号频域的固有稀疏性,本文结合了压缩感知(CS)技术与加权平均一致(weighted average consensus)算法,建立了分布式宽带压缩频谱感知模型。频谱感知分为两个阶段,在感知阶段,各个CR节点对接收到的主用户信号进行压缩采样以减少对宽带信号采样的开销和复杂度,并做出本地频谱估计;在信息融合阶段,各CR节点的本地频谱估计结果以分布式的方式进行信息融合,并得到最终的频谱估计结果,获得分集增益。仿真结果表明,结合压缩感知与加权平均一致算法增强了频谱感知的性能,比在相同的CR网络中使用平均一致算法时有了性能上的提升。      

Optimization of energy efficiency for cognitive radio with partial RF energy harvesting

The cognitive radio (CR) with energy harvesting is a potential technology to improve both the spectrum efficiency (SE) and the energy efficiency (EE). In this letter, we consider that the secondary users can harvest radio frequency (RF) energy from primary signal and its own signal. The goal is to maximize the energy efficiency of the CR system subject to sufficient protection to the primary user and the power constraint. An efficient algorithm is proposed to optimize the sensing time and the power of the secondary transmitter. Simulation results show that the EE is further improved by using the proposed mechanism.     

Effects of Location Awareness on Concurrent Transmissions for Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks Overlaying Infrastructure-Based Systems

Through wide-band spectrum sensing, cognitive radio (CR) can identify the opportunity of reusing the frequency spectrum of other wireless systems. However, wide-band spectrum sensing requires energy consumption processes. In this paper, we aim to relieve the burden of spectrum scanning in a CR system by means of location awareness. We investigate to what extent a CR system with location awareness capability can establish a scanning-free region where a peer-to-peer connection of the secondary CR users can coexist with an infrastructure-based connection of the primary user. We compute the concurrent transmission probability of a peer-to-peer connection and an infrastructure-based connection in a system based on the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium access control (MAC) protocol. It has been shown that the frequency band of the legacy system can be reused up to 45% by the overlaying cognitive ad hoc network if certain location techniques help CR users locate primary and other secondary users. In summary, a CR system equipped with location awareness techniques can dramatically reduce the need of spectrum sensing thanks to the capability of identifying the concurrent transmission region in a hybrid infrastructure-based and ad hoc overlaying systems. Hence, from another aspect, the issue of wide-band spectrum sensing in CR systems is resolved fundamentally.     

Spectrum sensing scheduling for group spectrum sharing in cognitive radio networks

This paper addresses the issues on spectrum sharing in a cognitive radio network consisting of a primary user and a group of cognitive users. Each cognitive user may occupy a non‐overlapped sub‐band of the primary spectrum, but it needs to perform spectrum sensing independently before accessing the sub‐band. To reduce the complexity of spectrum sensing and thus energy consumption, this paper proposes a scheduled spectrum sensing scheme. First, we consider a single spectrum sensing scenario where only one cognitive user is elected to perform spectrum sensing, and then it broadcasts its sensing results to the other cognitive users. The scheduled spectrum sensing scheme works in both network‐centric and user‐centric ways. Next, the scheduled spectrum sensing scheme is further generalized to work in a multiple spectrum sensing scenario. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes compared with the traditional schemes where all cognitive users may perform spectrum sensing at the same time. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Throughput performance of cooperative spectrum sensing network with improved energy detectors and SC diversity over fading channels

Wireless Networks - This paper proposes a novel cooperative spectrum sensing network (CSSN) with improved energy detector (IED) based cognitive radio (CR) users. Every CR user is furnished with...