Towards a trust aware cognitive radio architecture

Abstract

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising concept for improving the utilization of scarce radio spectrum resources. A reliable strategy for the detection of unused spectrum bands is essential to the design and practical implementation of CR systems. It is widely accepted that in a real-world environment, cooperative spectrum sensing involving many secondary users scattered in a wide geographical area can greatly improve sensing accuracy. However, some secondary users may misbehave, i.e. provide false sensing information, in an attempt to maximize their own utility gains. Such selfish behaviour, if unchecked, can severely impact the operation of the CR system. In this paper, we propose a novel trustaware hybrid spectrum sensing scheme which can detect misbehaving secondary users and filter out their reported spectrum sensing results from the decision making process. The robustness and efficiency of the proposed scheme are verified through extensive computer simulations.