Cognitive Radio (CR) is an attractive solution in mobile communication for solving the spectrum scarcity problem. Moreover, security concerns are not yet fully satisfied. This article focuses on attacks such as the Primary user emulation attack (PUE) and the jammer attack. These attacks create anomalous spectrum access thereby disturbing the dynamic spectrum usage in the CR networks. A framework based on cross-layer has been designed effectively to determine these attacks in the CR networks. First, each secondary user will sense the spectrum in the physical layer and construct a feature space. Using the extracted features, the clusters are formed effectively for each user. In the network layer, multipath routing is employed to discover the routes for the secondary user. If the node in the path identifies any spectrum shortage, it will verify that location with the help of constructed cluster. If the node does not belong to any of the clusters, then it will be identified as the attacker node. Simulation results and security analysis are performed using the NS2 simulations, which show improvement in detection of the attacks, decrease in the detection delay, and less route dis-connectivity. The proposed cross-layer framework identifies the anomalous spectrum access attack effectively.

2022 2nd Asian Conference on Innovation in Technology (ASIANCON)