Defense Against Selfish PUEA in Cognitive Radio Networks Based on Hash Message Authentication Code

Cognitive radio network (CRN) is a very astute technology developed to solve the spectrum shortage problem in wireless communication by utilizing the unused bands, where a secondary user (SU) utilizes the free spectrum of the primary user (PU) in an opportunistic manner. The CRN defines the free spectrum sessions using an intelligent and sophisticated process called a spectrum sensing. The spectrum sensing encounters a security problem called primary user emulation attack (PUEA). In this problem, an attacker mimics the PU signal to force the SUs to leave the free band. In this paper, a proposed model based on hash message authentication code (HMAC) is used to detect the PUEA in CRN. HMAC is used to trusting the PU transmission, which is not clarified until now. A shared secret key is used between the SU and the PU to achieve an accurate identification of the PU signal from the attacker. The effiectiveness of the proposed approach is analyzed through both theoretical analysis and Simulation. Results show that the proposed method is completely defeated the selfish PUEA and achieves efficient spectrum sharing, moreover, it provides a good detection of the PU when error correcting codes are used.