Cognitive Radio Networks and Security: A Survey

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), cognitive radio (CR) nodes adaptively access the spectrum aiming to maximize the utilization of the scarce resource. Crucial to the successful deployment of CRNs, security issues have begun to receive research interests recently. This article surveys the research advances in CRNs. First, the fundamentals of CRNs including the basic components (i.e., characteristics, opportunistic links, and network architectures), opportunistic spectrum access (OSA), and the inherent issues in CRNs are reviewed. Then, we present the current issues in security for CRNs. The current works on attacks in different layers of CRNs along with the state-of-the-art counter-strategies are investigated in detail.