On Secure Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Emitters Electromagnetic Signature

As Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) emerges as an extremely promising next generation wireless technology that can ease the apparent spectrum scarcity and support novel wireless applications; they will become bigger targets for hackers. Moreover, they will also be exposed to diverse security threats especially at the physical layer (PHY) spectrum sensing module. Hence, security consideration is central in its development. Starting with overview of on-going research efforts in CR-based network security, this paper describes a PHY attacker model that exploits the adaptability and flexibility of CRN. In thwarting this attack, we propose a waveform pattern recognition scheme to identify emitters and detect camouflaging attackers by using the Electromagnetic Signature (EMS) of the transceiver. On the performance of the technique, our simulation results show that our approach is effective for spectrum monitoring, mitigating denial-of-service threats and facilitating spectral efficiency.