A secure routing algorithm based on nodes behavior during spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks

Routing in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) faces many limitations that make it challenging. First, traditional routing protocols cannot be directly applied in CRNs because they consider fixed frequency band. Second, cognitive radio enables dynamic spectrum access which causes adverse effects on network performance. Third, effective routing in CR Networks (CRNs) needs local and continual knowledge of its environment. Last, presence of malicious nodes and their misbehaving activities affect the route establishment and therefore reduce the network performance. In this paper, we address such limitations by combining spectrum sensing and routing to propose a novel routing algorithm that uses nodes' behavior during spectrum sensing phase as a routing metric. Through the spectrum sensing phase, nodes behavior is measured through a parameter called belief level (BL), which describes the node's reliability to correctly sense the spectrum and to use spectrum channels accordingly. Moreover, we secure the routing requests and reply messages by encrypting them utilizing the existing cryptography techniques. The proposed approach is designed to maximize security level of paths, minimize the effects of licensed users activity over spectrum channels, and reduce the total channels cost over the best path(s). Evaluation of the proposed approach shows that its performance outperforms many current state-of-the-art routing algorithms used in CRNs in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and packet loss ratio.