An Analytical Model for Primary User Emulation
Attacks in Cognitive Radio Networks
S. Anand, Z. Jin and K. P. Subbalakshmi
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, USA
Abstract— In this paper, we study the denial-of-service (DoS)
attack on secondary users in a cognitive radio network by
primary user emulation (PUE). Most approaches in the literature
on primary user emulation attacks (PUEA) discuss mechanisms
to deal with the attacks but not analytical models. Simulation
studies and results from test beds have been presented but
no analytical model relating the various parameters that could
cause a PUE attack has been proposed and studied. We propose
an analytical approach based on Fenton’s approximation and
Markov inequality and obtain a lower bound on the probability
of a successful PUEA on a secondary user by a set of co-operating
malicious users. We consider a fading wireless environment and
discuss the various parameters that can affect the feasibility of
a PUEA. We show that the probability of a successful PUEA
increases with the distance between the primary transmitter and
secondary users. This is the first analytical treatment to study
the feasibility of a PUEA.
Keywords – Cognitive radio networks malicious user, primary user
emulation attack
I. INTRODUCTION
Spectrum sharing has always been an important aspect of
system design in wireless communication systems due to the
scarcity of the available resources/spectrum. Cognitive radio
networks [1] enable usage of unused spectrum in a network,
A, by users belonging to another network, B. These users
thereby become “secondary users” to the network A. The
users that originally subscribed to the network A are called
“primary users” of network A. One example of cognitive radio
network is the usage of white spaces (or unused spectrum) in
the television (TV) band. The TV transmitter then becomes
a primary transmitter and TV receivers are primary receivers.
Other users who are not TV subscribers but wish to use the
white spaces in the TV band for their own communication
become secondary transmitters/receivers. The IEEE 802.22
working group on wireless regional area networks (WRAN)
[2] provide the physical layer (PHY) and medium access
control (MAC) specifications for usage of the TV white
spaces. More details on the IEEE 802.22 can be found in [3],
[4]. The developments in software defined radio (SDR) [5]
enables implementation of re-configurable MAC for dynamic
spectrum access (DSA). Akyildiz et al [6] provide a detailed
survey of the developments in SDR, DSA and cognitive
radio. The etiquette followed in cognitive radios is that the
secondary users evacuate the used spectrum once they detect
This work was funded by a research grant from NSF Cyber Trust Grant
No. 0627688
a primary transmission. In [6], the authors also provide a
detailed description of the different sensing mechanisms that
enable secondary users to detect the presence of a primary user
namely: (a) Transmitter detection, (b)co-operative detection
and (c) interference-based detection. Transmitter detection, in
turn, can be performed using one of three mechanisms namely:
(i) matched filter detection, (ii) energy detection and (iii)
cyclostationary feature detection. A detailed description and
comparative study of the above methods are also provided in
[6]. Protocols for sensing primary transmission and evacuating
the spectrum were discussed by Visotsky et al [4] and by Liu
and Ding [7].
The etiquette of spectrum evacuation could however result
in denial-of-service attacks on secondary users if the system
is not carefully designed. This is explained as follows. Con-
sider a set of secondary users in the system. A subset of
users could forge the essential signal characteristics of the
primary and generate enough power at the good secondary
user locations to confuse the secondaries into thinking that a
primary transmission is under way. The secondaries obeying
the normal etiquette will vacate the spectrum unnecessarily.
The subset of users would then use the evacuated white space
for themselves. The secondary users who transmit to emulate
the primary transmitter are referred to as “malicious users”
while the other secondary users who evacuate the spectrum
upon sensing the transmission from the primary transmitter
or the malicious users are termed as “good” secondary users
1
.
Such an attack by malicious users on secondary users is called
a primary user emulation attack (PUEA). It is noted that such
attacks could lead to big disadvantages because several good
users could lose access to the network due to the presence of
a few malicious users. This, in turn, leads to poor usage of
spectrum for authorized users and an unfair advantage for the
malicious users.
PUEA in cognitive radio networks was studied in
[8],[9],[10]. In [8], Chen and Park propose two mechanisms
to detect a PUEA namely the distance ratio test (DRT) and
the distance difference test (DDT), which use the ratio and
the difference, respectively, of the distances of the primary
and malicious transmitters from the secondary user to detect
a PUEA. In [9], Chen et al discuss defense against PUEA
by localization of primary transmitters. Directional antennas
were proposed to determine the angle of arrival of the primary
1
Henceforth, throughout the paper, whenever we mention “secondary
users”, we refer to “good secondary users” unless explicitly mentioned
otherwise.