TRIESTE: A Trusted Radio Infrastructure for Enforcing SpecTrum Etiquettes

There has been considerable effort directed at developing "cognitive radio" (CR) platforms, which will expose the lower-layers of the protocol stack to researchers, developers and the "public". In spite of the great potential of such a radio platform, such "public" development threatens the success of these platforms: the proliferation of such wireless platforms, plus the open-source nature of their supporting software, is powerful but also dangerous. It is easily conceivable that inexpensive and widely available cognitive radios could become an ideal platform for abuse since the lowest layers of the wireless protocol stack are accessible to programmers. In order to regulate the future radio environment, this paper presents a framework, known as TRIESTE (Trusted Radio Infrastructure for Enforcing SpecTrum Etiquettes), which can ensure that radio devices are only able to access/use the spectrum in a manner that conforms to their privileges. In TRIESTE, two levels of etiquette enforcement mechanisms are employed. The first is an on-board mechanism that ensures trustworthy radio operation by restricting any potential violation operation from accessing the radio through a secure component located in each CR. External to individual cognitive radios, an infrastructure consisting of spectrum sensors monitors the radio environment, and reports measurements to spectrum police agents that punish CRs if violations are detected.