Security vulnerabilities in physical layer of cognitive radio

Cognitive Radio (CR) with Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is a promising technology to alleviate spectrum shortage problem in wireless communications. Military and commercial interests in the technology are high, to promote greater spectrum efficiency. The CR/DSA radio networking, however, introduces entirely new classes of security threats and providing strong security may prove to be the most difficult aspect of making CR/DSA a viable technology. In this paper, we focus on security vulnerabilities in the physical (PHY) layer of CR/DSA radio networks with energy based spectrum sensing. Various types of threats in PHY layer will be described, a testbed was developed and the results of security assessments on Primary User Emulation attack, Denial of Service attack and Spectrum Honeypot attack will be presented.