Fully Distributed Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRN) sense spectrum occupancy and manage themselves to operate in unused bands without disturbing licensed users. The detection capability of a radio system can be enhanced if the sensing process is performed jointly by a group of nodes so that the effects of wireless fading and shadowing can be minimized. However, taking a collaborative approach poses new security threats to the system as nodes can report false sensing data to force a wrong decision. Providing security to the sensing process is also complex, as it usually involves introducing limitations to the CRN applications. The most common limitation is the need for a static trusted node that is able to authenticate and merge the reports of all CRN nodes. This paper overcomes this limitation by presenting a protocol that is suitable for fully distributed scenarios, where there is no static trusted node

Autonomous functionalities for cognitive radio

This paper provides an overview on the research activities in autonomous functionalities for cognitive radio and networks, carried out in FP7/E3-project. The identified main research areas within this topic include opportunistic spectrum access and autonomous self-x functionalities for communication nodes. Opportunistic spectrum access delineates innovative topics concerning distributed cooperative spectrum sensing, collaborative MAC algorithms, distributed radio resource management algorithms, and control mechanisms for the opportunistic spectrum access. In autonomous self-x functionalities the research covers cognitive device management, autonomous RAT and operator selection and self-x features for autonomous elements, including autonomous decision making functionalities for RAT protocol configuration, negotiation on missing RAT protocol components, and functionality for dynamic configuration of RAT protocol components.Postprint (published version

Trust-aware Consensus-inspired Distributed Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Cooperation among cognitive radios for spectrum sensing is deemed essential for environments with deep shadows. In this paper, we study cooperative spectrum sensing for cognitive radio ad hoc networks where there is no fusion center to aggregate the information from various secondary users. We propose a novel consensus-inspired cooperative sensing scheme based on linear iterations that is fully distributed and low-cost. In addition, the tradeoffs on the number of consensus iterations are explored for scenarios with different shadow fading characteristics. Furthermore, we model insistent spectrum sensing data falsification (ISSDF) attack aimed at consensus-based iterative schemes and show its destructive effect on the cooperation performance which accordingly results in reduced spectrum efficiency and increased interference with primary users. We propose a trust management scheme to mitigate these attacks and evaluate the performance improvement through extensive Monte Carlo simulations for large-scale cognitive radio ad hoc networks in TV white space. Our proposed trust management reduces the harm of a set of collusive ISSDF attackers up to two orders of magnitude in terms of missed-detection and false alarm error rates. Moreover, in a hostile environment, integration of trust management into cooperative schemes considerably relaxes the sensitivity requirements on the cognitive radio devices

Joint Cooperative Spectrum Sensing and MAC Protocol Design for Multi-channel Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we propose a semi-distributed cooperative spectrum sen sing (SDCSS) and channel access framework for multi-channel cognitive radio networks (CRNs). In particular, we c onsider a SDCSS scheme where secondary users (SUs) perform sensing and exchange sensing outcomes with ea ch other to locate spectrum holes. In addition, we devise the p -persistent CSMA-based cognitive MAC protocol integrating the SDCSS to enable efficient spectrum sharing among SUs. We then perform throughput analysis and develop an algorithm to determine the spectrum sensing and access parameters to maximize the throughput for a given allocation of channel sensing sets. Moreover, we consider the spectrum sensing set optimization problem for SUs to maxim ize the overall system throughput. We present both exhaustive search and low-complexity greedy algorithms to determine the sensing sets for SUs and analyze their complexity. We also show how our design and analysis can be extended to consider reporting errors. Finally, extensive numerical results are presented to demonstrate the sig nificant performance gain of our optimized design framework with respect to non-optimized designs as well as the imp acts of different protocol parameters on the throughput performance.Comment: accepted for publication EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 201

Distributed Cooperative Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks: An Overlapping Coalition Formation Approach

Cooperative spectrum sensing has been shown to yield a significant performance improvement in cognitive radio networks. In this paper, we consider distributed cooperative sensing (DCS) in which secondary users (SUs) exchange data with one another instead of reporting to a common fusion center. In most existing DCS algorithms, the SUs are grouped into disjoint cooperative groups or coalitions, and within each coalition the local sensing data is exchanged. However, these schemes do not account for the possibility that an SU can be involved in multiple cooperative coalitions thus forming overlapping coalitions. Here, we address this problem using novel techniques from a class of cooperative games, known as overlapping coalition formation games, and based on the game model, we propose a distributed DCS algorithm in which the SUs self-organize into a desirable network structure with overlapping coalitions. Simulation results show that the proposed overlapping algorithm yields significant performance improvements, decreasing the total error probability up to 25% in the Q_m+Q_f criterion, the missed detection probability up to 20% in the Q_m/Q_f criterion, the overhead up to 80%, and the total report number up to 10%, compared with the state-of-the-art non-overlapping algorithm

A Coalition Formation Game for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Network under the Constraint of Overhead

Cooperative spectrum sensing improves the sensing performance of secondary users by exploiting spatial diversity in cognitive radio networks. However, the cooperation of secondary users introduces some overhead also that may degrade the overall performance of cooperative spectrum sensing.  The trade-off between cooperation gain and overhead plays a vital role in modeling cooperative spectrum sensing.  This paper considers overhead in terms of reporting energy and reporting time. We propose a cooperative spectrum sensing based coalitional game model where the utility of the game is formulated as a function of throughput gain and overhead. To achieve a rational average throughput of secondary users, the overhead incurred is to be optimized. This work emphasizes on optimization of the overhead incurred. In cooperative spectrum sensing, the large number of cooperating users improve the detection performance, on the contrary, it increases overhead too. So, to limit the maximum coalition size we propose a formulation under the constraint of the probability of false alarm. An efficient fusion center selection scheme and an algorithm to select eligible secondary users for reporting are proposed to reduce the reporting overhead. We also outline a distributed cooperative spectrum sensing algorithm using the properties of the coalition formation game and prove that the utility of the proposed game has non-transferable properties.  The simulation results show that the proposed schemes reduce the overhead of reporting without compromising the overall detection performance of cooperative spectrum sensing

Un nuevo esquema de agrupación para redes sensoras inalámbricas de radio cognitivas heterogéneas

Introduction: This article is the product of the research “Learning-based Spectrum Analysis and Prediction in Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks”, developed at Sejong University in the year 2019. Problem: Most of the clustering schemes for distributed cognitive radio-enabled wireless sensor networks consider homogeneous cognitive radio-enabled wireless sensors. Many clustering schemes for such homogeneouscognitive radio-enabled wireless sensor networks waste resources and suffer from energy inefficiency because of the unnecessary overheads. Objective: The objective of the research is to propose a node clustering scheme that conserves energy and prolongs network lifetime. Methodology: A heterogeneous cognitive radio-enabled wireless sensor network in which only a few nodes have a cognitive radio module and the other nodes are normal sensor nodes. Along with the hardware cost, theproposed scheme is efficient in energy consumption. Results: We simulated the proposed scheme and compared it with the homogeneous cognitive radio-enabled wireless sensor networks. The results show that the proposed scheme is efficient in terms of energyconsumption. Conclusion: The proposed node clustering scheme performs better in terms of network energy conservation and network partition. Originality: There are heterogeneous node clustering schemes in the literature for cooperative spectrum sensing and energy efficiency, but to the best of our knowledge, there is no study that proposes a non-cognitiveradio-enabled sensor clustering for energy conservation along with cognitive radio-enabled wireless sensors. Limitations: The deployment of the proposed special device for cognitive radio-enabled wireless sensors is complicated and requires special hardware with better battery powered cognitive sensor nodes

A Context-aware Trust Framework for Resilient Distributed Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Dynamic Settings

Cognitive radios enable dynamic spectrum access where secondary users (SUs) are allowed to operate on the licensed spectrum bands on an opportunistic noninterference basis. Cooperation among the SUs for spectrum sensing is essential for environments with deep shadows. In this paper, we study the adverse effect of insistent spectrum sensing data falsification (ISSDF) attack on iterative distributed cooperative spectrum sensing. We show that the existing trust management schemes are not adequate in mitigating ISSDF attacks in dynamic settings where the primary user (PU) of the band frequently transitions between active and inactive states. We propose a novel context-aware distributed trust framework for cooperative spectrum sensing in mobile cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHN) that effectively alleviates different types of ISSDF attacks (Always-Yes, Always-No, and fabricating) in dynamic scenarios. In the proposed framework, the SU nodes evaluate the trustworthiness of one another based on the two possible contexts in which they make observations from each other: PU absent context and PU present context. We evaluate the proposed context-aware scheme and compare it against the existing context-oblivious trust schemes using theoretical analysis and extensive simulations of realistic scenarios of mobile CRAHNs operating in TV white space. We show that in the presence of a large set of attackers (as high as 60% of the network), the proposed context-aware trust scheme successfully mitigates the attacks and satisfy the false alarm and missed-detection rates of $10^{-2}$ and lower. Moreover, we show that the proposed scheme is scalable in terms of attack severity, SU network density, and the distance of the SU network to the PU transmitter