Analysis of primary user emulation attack with motional secondary users in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we study primary user emulation attacks (PUEA) issue in a cognitive radio network. Most literatures about the PUEA discuss methods to deal with the attacks in a system model where the positions of the primary user and secondary users are fixed. Hence, we focus on the PUEA problem in a system model where the secondary users are motional. Based on the network model with motional secondary users, we discuss how the attacker emulates the primary user. Then, a hybrid PUEA defense strategy based on a combination of energy detection and variance detection is proposed. The performance of the hybrid PUEA defense strategy is analyzed on the premise that the system has particular performance requirements. Simulation results show that our proposed hybrid PUEA defense strategy always performs well. This is the first analytical treatment to study PUEA problem in the scenario with motional secondary users.