A Systematic Review of the Primary User Emulation Attack in the Cognitive Radio Network

Cognitive Radio Technology (CRT) is a prominent solution for the spectrum scarcity and spectrum underutilization problems experienced by wireless networks and wireless devices because it allows for the intelligent and opportunistic use of the licensed frequency band by unlicensed users. However, due to its wireless nature, the CRT faces many security threats. In this paper, we have discussed some of the security threats affecting the protocol stack and the five layers of the Cognitive Radio Network (CRN), with a focus on the Primary User Emulation Attack (PUEA). The primary user emulation attack (PUEA) is one of the most common attacks affecting the physical layer of the cognitive radio network (CRN). In this attack, a malicious or selfish user mimics the signal characteristics of the primary user (PU) to deceive the legitimate secondary user (SU) about the PU occupancy’s status causing the SU to leave the available channel while the real PU is absent. The PUEA causes a denial of service, bandwidth wastage, connection unreliability, and degradation to the practical implementation of the CRN. Although many review papers enhanced our knowledge of the PUEA, in this paper we integrate new research findings with the old ones to contribute to knowledge in research community. Also, we discussed some detection and countermeasures for the PUEA in the CRN. Finally, a summary of the findings on how best to mitigate the effect of PUE attacks in the CR is presented.