Common control channel security framework for cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio networks are becoming an increasingly important part of the wireless networking landscape due to the ever-increasing scarcity of spectrum resources. Such networks perform co-operative spectrum sensing to find white spaces and apply policies to determine when and in which bands they may communicate. In a typical MAC protocol designed for cooperatively communicating ad hoc cognitive radio networks, nodes make use of a common control channel to perform channel negotiations before any actual data transmission. The provision of common control channel security is vital to ensure any subsequent security among the communicating cognitive radio nodes. To date, wireless security has received little attention in cognitive radio networks research. The cognitive radio paradigm introduces entirely new classes of security threats and challenges, such as selfish misbehaviours, licensed user emulation and eavesdropping. This paper presents a novel framework for providing common control channel security for co-operatively communicating cognitive radio nodes. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper which proposes such a concept. The paper investigates how two cognitive radio nodes can authenticate each other prior to any confidential channel negotiations to ensure subsequent security against attacks. The paper also describes the importance of common control channel security and concludes with future work describing the realization of the proposed framework.