Cognitive Radio Network: Security Enhancements

Reference to the latest developments the spectrum shortage problems are because of the wireless communication. For the future networks the most practical, scientific and systematic challenges is the use of licensed or unlicensed wireless networks with opportunistic use of the spectrum with, without and limited rules. Since different wireless networks are using different frequency bands. So there is a need to use lessening bands when there is no activity on them. Cognitive radio is a new technology which leads to solve these problems through dynamically utilization of rules and spectrum. Several spectrum sharing schemes have been proposed. Now a day’s security in cognitive radio network becomes a major and challenging issue, and chances are prearranged to the attackers in cognitive radio technology as compared to the wireless networks in a general form. In cognitive radio, mobile station equipment may switch to any available frequency band, as it makes a list of available free channel and make handoff decision accordingly. So whenever handoff is made whether soft or hard there will be a chance that malicious attacker may hack ongoing traffic or he may even interrupt established traffic by imitating any kind of passive or active attack like interception, spoofing denial of service etc. This paper explore the key challenges to provide security in cognitive radio networks, and discusses the current security carriage of emerging IEEE 802.22 cognitive radio typical and recognizes security threats and vulnerabilities along with the countermeasures and solutions.