Reputation-based cooperative spectrum sensing with trusted nodes assistance

Abstract

Existing cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) schemes are typically vulnerable to attacks where misbehaved cognitive radios (CRs) falsify sensing data. To ensure the robustness of spectrum sensing, this letter presents a secure CSS scheme by introducing a reputation-based mechanism to identify misbehaviors and mitigate their harmful effect on sensing performance. Encouraged by the fact that such secure CSS is sensitive to the correctness of reputations, we further present a trusted node assistance scheme. This scheme starts with reliable CRs. Sensing information from other CRs are incorporated into cooperative sensing only when their reputation is verified, which increases robustness of cooperative sensing. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.