Trust-Based System to Defend Against the Spectrum Sensing Data Falsification Attack in Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Network

The underutilization of the spectrum band has led to the problems of spectrum shortage. While some spectrum bands remain unutilized, some radio devices are overcrowded in their spectrum bands. Cognitive radio networks address the challenges of spectrum underutilization by allowing the secondary devices to utilize the vacant spectrum band of the licensed devices opportunistically. The secondary devices have to incorporate spectrum sensing cooperatively. Due to cooperative spectrum sensing, security challenges like the spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack have emerged. The SSDF attack is an attack whereby malicious secondary users report incorrect spectrum information to their neighbouring nodes which can cause interference to licensed users. This paper proposes a trust-based system known as the reputation-based system to mitigate the effects of the SSDF attack in cognitive radio ad hoc networks. Results are presented in forms of graphs simulated using Matlab installed in Windows 10 operating system.