Trust-aware resource allocation in a cognitive radio system

Cognitive radio (CR) is a concept which can be used to improve the utilization of scarce radio spectrum resources. A reliable strategy for the detection of unused spectrum bands is essential in a practical implementation of CR systems. It is widely accepted that in a real-world environment, cooperative spectrum sensing involving many secondary users (SUs) scattered over a wide geographical area can greatly improve sensing accuracy. However, some SUs 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 trust-aware resource allocation scheme in a centralized cognitive radio network with a system-level trust model in which trustworthiness is used as social capital to gain system resources. The scheme can detect misbehaving SUs and filter out the malicious attacks while attempting to maximize the total bit rate of SUs. Computer simulations are used to illustrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed scheme under various attack scenarios.