A trust based framework for both spectrum sensing and data transmission in CR-MANETs

Distributed cooperative spectrum sensing is an effective and feasible approach to detect primary users in Cognitive Radio Mobile Ad Hoc NETworks (CR-MANETs). However, due to the dynamic and interdependent characteristics of this approach, malicious attackers can interrupt the normal spectrum sensing more easily in open environments by spectrum sensing data falsification attacks. Meanwhile, attackers can perform traditional attacks to data transmission in MANETs. Towards these complicated situations in CR-MANETs, we study a new type of attack named joint dynamic spectrum sensing and data transmission attack in this paper. We propose a trust based framework to protect both distributed cooperative spectrum sensing and data transmission. For protection of distributed cooperative spectrum sensing, a weighted-average consensus algorithm with trust is applied to degrade the impact of malicious secondary users. At the same time, data transmission in a network formed by secondary users can be protected by trust with direct and indirect observations. Simulation results show the effectiveness and performance of the proposed framework under different experimental scenarios.