Mitigating Primary User Emulation Attacks in Cooperative Spectrum Sensing

Abstract

Similar to other wireless networks, the Cognitive Radio (CR) network is susceptible to several types of attacks. Common attacks on the CR Network include Miss-Detection (Primary User Emulation Attacker (PUEA), lazy-Secondary User (SU), and malicious-SU) and Noise (a network jammer is the attacker’s tool). Given that it has an integrated sensor system, the PUEA is thought to be the most destructive of them all. It monitors the activity of Primary User (PU) and attempts to take over the spectrum even when the PU is on the network. It fools the Sensing Nodes, or SUs, by seeming to be the PU. This study proposes a method based on Time-of-Flight/Time-of-Arrival (ToF/ToA) to monitor PU position. Simulation results show improvement in network throughput when compared with conventional systems for location history technique.