Location-based authentication protocol for first cognitive radio networking standard

The developing IEEE 802.22 standard will allow broadband access to be provided in sparsely populated areas by using cognitive radio techniques with operations on a non-interfering basis over television broadcast bands. Such non-interfering basis operation will increase the efficiency of utilisation of that spectrum, and provide large economic and societal benefits. However, the security mechanisms supported by IEEE 802.22 security sub-layer are insufficient to ensure robust security due to the fact that the designers of the standard attempted to reuse the security sub-layer designed for IEEE 802.16 networks, which does not consider the unique security features from IEEE 802.22 networks. This paper proposes a location-based authentication protocol for IEEE 802.22, which can be integrated with the extensible authentication protocol. The proposed protocol uses location information as a key factor to be authenticated each other. Furthermore, it could provide the privacy and confidentiality. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.