Defending Primary User Emulation Attack in Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract

In cognitive radio network, an un-licensed user can use a
vacant channel in a spectrum band of licensed user.
Spectrum sensing is one of the critical function in
spectrum management. Cognitive radio is the promising
technology to solve the problem of spectrum scarcity in
which the secondary users can sense the spectrum and
utilize the licensed bands when the spectrum is not being
utilized by the primary user. Many malicious secondary
users can generate the signals similar to primary
transmitter to confuse the good secondary users into
thinking that a primary transmission is in progress. The
good secondary users then will vacate the spectrum
unnecessarily. The malicious users would then use the
evacuated white space for themselves. This attack by
malicious secondary users is called as primary user
emulation attack (PUEA) and it considerably increase the
spectrum access failure probability. In this paper we
analyze the probability density function (PDF) at both
good and malicious users. We also considered the cooperation
between the secondary users to detect primary
user emulation attack.