A survey on authentication mechanisms in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive Radio Networks has proved as the Next generation wireless technology. Cognitive Radio Network provides solutions for spectrum scarcity and spectrum underutilization problems. This CRN technology has intelligent devices which are capable of detecting vacant channels. In CRN’s unofficial users referred as Secondary Users(SU) are capable to access this vacant frequency channels whenever Primary Users (PU) are not utilizing these channels. Several issues and security concerns are occurred while deploying the cognitive radio technology. In these networks the cognitive nodes can also enter and vacate the spectrum dynamically. So there is a chance for malicious node to enter into the network. This will creates problem for making secure communication. For this reason, every node has to be validated before entering into the network. Authentication is used to validate the identity of the user and it is the primary security property. In this paper, we review about various authentication mechanisms applied to cognitive radio networks.