Towards trustworthy collaboration in spectrum sensing for ad hoc cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRN) make use of dynamic spectrum access to communicate opportunistically in frequency bands otherwise licensed to incumbent primary users such as TV broadcast. To prevent interference to primary users it is vital for secondary users in CRNs to conduct accurate spectrum sensing, which is especially challenging when the transmission range of primary users is shorter compared to the size of the CRN. This task becomes even more challenging in the presence of malicious secondary users that launch spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attacks by providing false spectrum reports. Existing solutions to detect such malicious behaviors cannot be utilized in scenarios where the transmission range of primary users is limited within a small sub-region of the CRN. In this paper, we present a framework for trustworthy collaboration in spectrum sensing for ad hoc CRNs. This framework incorporates a semi-supervised spatio-spectral anomaly/outlier detection system and a reputation system, both designed to detect byzantine attacks in the form of SSDF from malicious nodes within the CRN. The framework guarantees protection of incumbent primary users’ communication rights while at the same time making optimal use of the spectrum when it is not used by primary users. Simulation carried out under typical network conditions and attack scenarios shows that our proposed framework can achieve spectrum decision accuracy up to 99.3 % and detect malicious nodes up to 98 % of the time.     

可信的反馈声誉保护协作频谱感知软判决算法

协作频谱感知中信任机制的引入,起到了抑制恶意用户频谱感知数据伪造( SSDF)攻击行为的作用。然而,数据融合中心不加区分地接收协作感知结束后的反馈信息,为恶意用户带来了实施“掺沙子”攻击的机会。恶意用户向数据融合中心反馈错误的主用户频谱状态,使信任机制不能得出准确的信任值。为此,提出了一种基于反馈声誉的信任机制,考虑反馈中的个体性特征,引入反馈声誉的思想来量化认知用户信任值。同时,将信任值量化结果用于权重经典软判决算法———序贯概率比检测( SPRT)算法,消除SSDF恶意用户参与软判决数据融合的影响,形成可信序贯概率比检测算法( FSPRT)。仿真结果表明FSPRT算法的性能优于传统SPRT算法,能有效降低网络信任值计算误差,并保持较好的感知性能。     

Sensor node-assisted asynchronous cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radio network

In order to take advantage of the asynchronous sensing information, alleviate the sensing overhead of secondary users （SUs） and improve the detection performance, a sensor node-assisted asynchronous cooperative spectrum sensing （SN-ACSS） scheme for cognitive radio （CR） network （CRN） was proposed. In SN-ACSS, each SU is surrounded by sensor nodes （SNs）, which asynchronously make hard decisions and soft decisions based on the Bayesian fusion rule instead of the SU. The SU combines these soft decisions and makes the local soft decision. Finally, the fusion center （FC） fuses the local soft decisions transmitted from SUs with different weight coefficients to attain the final soft decision. Besides, the impact of the statistics of licensed band occupancy on detection performance and the fact that different SNs have different sensing contributions are also considered in SN-ACSS scheme. Numerical results show that compared with the conventional synchronous cooperative spectrum sensing （SCSS） and the existing ACSS schemes, SN-ACSS algorithm achieves a better detection performance and lower cost with the same number of SNs.     

抗SSDF攻击的一致性协作频谱感知方案

在分布式认知无线电网络中,一般很难找到合适的融合中心能够收集所有协作用户的感知信息,而且协作过程极可能遭到篡改感知数据(Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification,SSDF)攻击.鉴于此,该文提出了一种改进的一致性协作频谱感知方案.利用Metropolis迭代规则,各次用户仅依靠邻接点之间的...     

Efficient Spectrum Sensing with Minimum Transmission Delay in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio (CR) networks, the secondary users (SUs) need to find idle channels via spectrum sensing for their transmission. In this paper, we study the problem of designing the sensing time to minimize the SU transmission delay under the condition of sufficient protection to primary users (PUs). Energy detection sensing scheme is used to prove that the formulated problem indeed has one optimal sensing time which yields the minimum SU transmission delay. Then, we propose a novel cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) framework, in which one SU’s reporting time can be used for other SUs’ sensing. The analysis focuses on two fusion strategies: soft information fusion and hard information fusion. Under soft information fusion, it is proved that there exists one optimal sensing time that minimizes the SU transmission delay. Under hard information fusion, for time varying channels, the novel multi-slot CSS is derived. The performance of SU transmission delay is studied in both perfect and imperfect reporting channels. Some simple algorithms are derived to calculate the optimal sensing settings that minimize the SU transmission delay. Computer simulations show that fundamental improvement of delay performance can be obtained by the optimal sensing settings. In addition, the novel multi-slot CSS scheme shows a much lower transmission delay than CSS based on general frame structure.     

Fault-Tolerant Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Scheme for Cognitive Radio Networks

In order to solve the uncertainty resulting from shadowing effect and resist the attack from malicious cognitive radio (CR) users, we propose a fault-tolerant cooperative spectrum sensing scheme for CR networks, where an energy detection-based local spectrum sensing is performed at each CR user, a coefficient is used to weight each CR user’s sensing result, a linear weighted fusion process is performed at the fusion center (FC) to combine received sensing results. For a fault-tolerant cooperative spectrum sensing scheme, the most important issue is to distinguish whether the CR user is reliable or not. In this paper, a reputation-based cooperative mechanism is presented to alleviate the influence of the unreliable sensing results from CR users suffering shadowing and the false sensing data from malicious CR users on the detection result at the FC. In proposed fault-tolerant cooperative scheme, each cooperative CR user has a reputation degree which is initialized and adjusted by the FC and used to weight the sensing result from the corresponding user in the fusion process at the FC. And then, two reputation degree adjusting methods are presented to manage the reputation degree of each CR user. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can not only weaken the harmful influence caused by malicious CR users, but also alleviate the corrupted detection problem resulting from destructive channel condition between the primary transmitter and the CR user. Moreover, the detection performance of the fault-tolerant cooperative scheme, which has a feasible computational complexity and needs no instantaneous SNRs, is close to that of the optimal scheme.     

一种SSDF攻击检测的证据理论合作频谱感知算法

现有的基于证据理论的合作频谱感知认为所有认知用户都是诚实的,没有考虑恶意用户的存在。当恶意用户篡改本地感知的结果,发送错误的数据到数据融合中心,将会降低合作频谱感知的性能,这种攻击称为频谱感知数据篡改（spectrum sensing data falsification,SSDF）攻击。由于恶意用户发送的证据与其它认知用户的证据存在差别,本文使用Jousselme距离来衡量证据的可信度,提出一种SSDF攻击检测算法。数据融合中心接收所有认知用户的证据,让可信度低的证据不参与融合判决,可信度高的证据根据可信度进行加权融合。仿真结果表明,所提出的SSDF攻击检测算法在恶意用户发起SSDF攻击时可以很好的改善频谱感知性能。      

一种基于信誉度的航空无线电协作频谱感知方法

摘要：传统的航空无线电协作频谱感知算法无法区分节点的性质（普通/恶意）,而新的加权序贯检测（weighted sequential probability ratio test,WSPRT）算法虽然解决了这个问题,但在具有频谱感知数据篡改（spectrum sensing data falsification,SSDF）攻击节点的环境中,无法保持高的感知正确率。提出了一种改进型WSPRT 算法,在传统的 WSPRT 算法基础上改进了信誉度奖惩方案,增加了临近时间内感知稳定度的量化。从实验仿真结果看,改进后的算法不仅时间复杂度更低,而且能够有效地识别恶意节点,对于恶意用户的判定更准确。     

Improved cooperative spectrum sensing based on the reputation in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology to improve the utilisation of wireless spectrum resources. Spectrum sensing is the core functionality in CR networks (CRN). When there exist malicious users (MUs) in CRN and MUs start to attack the network after accumulating reputation to some extent, the performance is deteriorated. In this paper, a scheme is proposed by employing Orthogonalized Gnanadesikan–Kettenring (OGK) to mitigate the effect of MUs without the assistance of trusted nodes, and it can improve the robustness of CRN. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Efficient error detection in soft data fusion for cooperative spectrum sensing

The primary objective of cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is to determine whether a particular spectrum is occupied by a licensed user or not, so that unlicensed users called secondary users (SUs) can utilize that spectrum, if it is not occupied. For CSS, all SUs report their sensing information through reporting channel to the central base station called fusion center (FC). During transmission, some of the SUs are subjected to fading and shadowing, due to which the overall performance of CSS is degraded. We have proposed an algorithm which uses error detection technique on sensing measurement of all SUs. Each SU is required to re-transmit the sensing data to the FC, if error is detected on it. Our proposed algorithm combines the sensing measurement of limited number of SUs. Using Proposed algorithm, we have achieved the improved probability of detection (PD) and throughput. The simulation results compare the proposed algorithm with conventional scheme.     

A novel approach for energy‐efficient resource allocation in double threshold‐based cognitive radio network

This paper mainly focuses on solving the energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem in double threshold‐based soft decision fusion (SDF) cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) in the cognitive radio network (CRN). The solution to this objective problem starts with the selection of suitable secondary users (SUs) both for the spectrum sensing and data transmission. Here, energy efficiency is maximized under the constraints of interference to the primary user (PU), an acceptable outage of SUs, the transmission power of the SUs and the probability of false alarm. We propose a novel algorithm called iterative Dinkelbach method (IDM) which jointly optimizes the sensing time and transmission power allocation to the SUs. Further, Lagrangian duality theorem is employed to find the exact power assigned to the SUs. Finally, simulation results are carried out to validate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme by comparing with the other existing schemes. The performance is also analyzed for different system parameters.     

A Distance Based Reliable Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Algorithm in Cognitive Radio

Spectrum sensing is the most critical task in cognitive radio (CR) which needs to be performed very precisely in order to efficiently utilize the underutilized spectrum and to provide sufficient protection to the primary users (PUs). To improve the sensing performance under fading, shadowing and hidden terminal problems more than one CR users collaboratively perform the spectrum sensing called as cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS). In conventional CSS the decision of each CR is fused at fusion center with equal weights. But due to variable distance of each CR from the PU all decisions are not equally reliable and therefore should be assigned different weights according to their reliability. In this paper we propose a new weighting scheme for CSS under Rayleigh faded channel. In proposed weighting scheme, based on the distance of each CR from the PU reliability of CR nodes is determined and correspondingly appropriate weights are assigned to different users. The CSS algorithm using new weighting scheme gives better performance than conventional CSS algorithm.     

抗SSDF攻击的EWSPRT协作频谱感知方案

比较了认知无线电网络中几种典型的协作感知方案在篡改感知数据(SSDF)攻击条件下的感知性能,并提出了一种增强型加权序贯检测(EWSPRT)协作方案.在该方案中,各次用户首先通过能量检测得到2 bit本地决策,然后收集其它协作用户的感知结果进行决策融合和最终判决,并依据历史观测信息动态更新各协作用户的融合权重;利用改进的...     

协作频谱感知研究及其面临的问题和挑战

频谱感知是认知无线网络(CRN)中的关键功能，其可以识别空闲频谱以提高频谱利用率且避免对授权用户产生有害干扰。然而，由于多径衰落，阴影，接收机不确定性等各种问题带来的重大挑战，导致授权用户的检测失败。利用协作频谱感知(CSS)技术可以最大限度地减少这些问题的影响，并通过利用空间分集来提高检测性能。本文首先介绍了认知无线网络和频谱感测技术的简要历史，然后对协作频谱感知进行了简要的研究，讨论了协作频谱感知的不同类型、技术、协作模型、特征比较，并分析了一些前期研究方案及其所面临的挑战。     

利用分组过滤加强SSDF攻击防御的方案设计

在协作频谱感知网络中,设备故障、信道阴影衰落和噪声等会导致频谱感知器(如手机、平板等)发送的信息不可靠,而恶意用户在协作频谱感知网络中,也会发送错误的感知信息以混淆视听,干扰诚实用户的判决结果。不可靠消息在邻居用户间的传递必将导致感知结果产生偏差和错误,大大降低了协作频谱感知的效率。为解决上述问题,本文将置信传播算法和信誉模型相结合,提出一种基于次用户分组的频谱感知数据伪造(SSDF,Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification)攻击防御方案。该方案分两个阶段对不可靠信息进行过滤:首先,在频谱感知阶段,通过置信传播算法对次用户进行分组,过滤掉因设备故障等因素产生的不可靠用户,剩余用户则视为正常工作用户进行数据融合。然后,在数据融合阶段,根据以信誉值作为权重因子的置信传播算法来计算最终的判决值。本文所提方案分别在感知阶段和融合阶段采取了防御措施,可有效地过滤网络中的不可靠信息,减小恶劣的频谱环境对次用户感知结果的影响。仿真结果表明,本文所提方案迭代次数少、收敛快,有效地减弱了SSDF攻击带来的损害,提高了感知结果的准确性、增强了认知无线网络的安全性。      

Mitigating spectrum sensing data falsification attack in ad hoc cognitive radio networks

In a cognitive radio ad hoc network, there is no central authority. Hence, distributed collaborative spectrum sensing (CSS) plays a major role in achieving an accurate spectrum sensing result. However, CSS is sensitive to spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack, in which a malicious user falsifies its local sensing report before disseminating it into the network. To capture such abnormal behavior of a node, we present an approach for detecting SSDF attack based on dissimilarity score. A secondary user (SU) computes the dissimilarity score of its neighbors from the messages received from its h‐hop neighbors. Further, we also present how the proposed scheme can be used on the sequence of sensing reports to detect and isolate the malicious SUs on the fly.     

考虑恶意节点的CRN合作频谱感知方法

基于带有恶意节点的更为实际的频谱感知环境,研究了基于合作感知的频谱共享网络模型,次级用户将会根据合作感知结果动态地调整其发射功率。为了防止恶意节点对感知系统的感知性能造成严重影响,研究了如何进行合作感知以提高感知性能。在一定的检测概率和相关功率约束下,建立了一个以最大化次级网络的吞吐量为目标函数的优化问题。仿真实验首先突出说明了恶意节点数目对频谱感知影响重大,同时还表明无论是否存在恶意节点,提出的算法均可有效地计算出最优的感知时间和发射功率,且在降低最大干扰功率限制和最大发射功率限制时,网络的吞吐量是增大的。     

Optimization of multiple-channel cooperative spectrum sensing with data fusion rule in cognitive radio networks

This paper focuses on multi-channel Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) where Secondary Users (SUs) are assigned to cooperatively sense multiple channels simultaneously. A multi-channel CSS optimization problem of joint spectrum sensing and SU assignment based on data fusion rule is formulated, which maximizes the total throughput of the Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) subject to the constraints of probabilities of detection and false alarm. To address the optimization problem, a Branch and Bound (BnB) algorithm and a greedy algorithm are proposed to obtain the optimal solutions. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms and show that the throughput improvement is achieved through the joint design. It is also shown that the greedy algorithm with a low complexity achieves the comparable performance to the exhaustive algorithm.     

Delay QoS Guaranteed Cooperative Double-Threshold Sensing Scheme in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio networks, cooperation can greatly improve the performance of spectrum sensing. This paper proposes a delay (QoS) quality-of-service guaranteed cooperative spectrum sensing frame structure in which secondary users (SUs) conduct spectrum sensing and data transmission concurrently over two different parts of the primary user spectrum band. A double-threshold sensing scheme is employed in the local sensing step, only the SUs with reliable sensing information are allowed to transmit their “one bit” local decisions to the fusion center. The sensing performance and the SU transmission delay are analyzed in detail in this paper. Computer simulations show that the delay QoS guaranteed cooperative double-threshold sensing scheme could not only decrease the SU transmission delay but also save the reporting overhead of the SUs compared with the conventional detection method with one threshold.     

Fast and Accurate Detection of Malicious Users in Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Network

Cooperative spectrum sensing allows users to detect available spectrum and utilize it. However, it is known that a few users can easily affect the cooperative decision at the fusion center by reporting falsified sensing data. The problem of detecting malicious users in cooperative spectrum sensing has been studied by numerous researchers. The basic approach is to compute the credibility of the reported data of each user and declare those with low credibility (below some threshold) as malicious. The computation of credibility can be based on several things such as pattern of historic behavior, entropy of the reported data, signal-to-noise ratio, etc. The credibility of the reported data of some user node can be expressed as an attack probability of that node. A node with higher attack probability will have lower credibility while a node with lower attack probability a higher credibility. Then, the problem of computing credibility of a node becomes the problem of computing attack probability of a node given a set of reported data. We can enumerate a list of all possible attack probability vectors for a set of nodes and the list of all possible energy level vectors of the channel for the observed time period, and compute which combination of attack probability and channel energy level vector can have the maximum probability to produce the reported channel energy level. However, the search space is quite large and grows exponentially as the number of user nodes and the number of time slots to observe increase. In this paper, we suggest algorithms that reduce the search space considerably and detect malicious users in linear time instead of exponential time. The suggested algorithms have been implemented and show promising results.