Jamming mitigation in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are recognized as the enabling technology for improving future bandwidth utilization. CRNs have intrinsic security threats due to their opportunistic exploitation of the bandwidth. In particular, jamming is one of the most challenging security threats for CRNs. In this work we provide several contributions about jamming in CRNs: we classify the various jamming strategies, provide a review of recent anti-jamming countermeasures, and introduce a novel anti-jamming solution for CRNs. Our solution is based on a distributed, probabilistic protocol that, while on the one hand could introduce some (limited) delay in message propagation, on the other hand enjoys several features: it avoids control channels for the coordination of the secondary users; does not need any information related to the node neighborhood; and it does not leverage any knowledge or statistics about the channel usage. Given the novelty of the proposal and its potential to thwart jamming in CRNs, we believe it could pave the way for further research in the field. © 1986-2012 IEEE.