Cryptographic link signatures for spectrum usage authentication in cognitive radio
Xi Tan, Kapil M. Borle, Wenliang Kevin Du, Biao Chen · 2011
It was shown that most of the radio frequency spectrum was inefficiently utilized. To fully use these spectrums, cognitive radio networks have been proposed. The idea is to allow secondary users to use a spectrum if the primary user (i.e., the legitimate owner of the spectrum) is not using it. To achieve this, secondary users should constantly monitor the usage of the spectrum to avoid interference with the primary user. However, achieving a trustworthy monitoring is not easy. A malicious secondary user who wants to gain an unfair use of a spectrum can emulate the primary user, and can thus trick the other secondary users into believing that the primary user is using the spectrum when it is not. This attack is called the Primary User Emulation (PUE) attack. To prevent this attack, there should be a way to authenticate primary users' spectrum usage.