Spectrum Access through Threats in Cognitive Radio Networks

TL;DR

This paper analyzes spectrum access in cognitive radio networks through game-theoretic models, revealing that Stackelberg equilibrium often outperforms Nash equilibrium and that knowledge of eavesdropper channels influences secondary user strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive game-theoretic framework for spectrum sharing considering confidentiality and eavesdropping, including static, Stackelberg, and multi-user scenarios, with new insights on equilibrium dominance.

Findings

Stackelberg equilibrium outperforms Nash in utility.

Secondary users may not benefit from hiding eavesdropper channels.

Primary system can optimize performance by selecting secondary users.

Abstract

We consider multiple access games in which primary users are interested in maximizing their confidential data rate at the minimum possible transmission power and secondary users employ eavesdropping as a leverage to maximize their data rate to a common destination at minimum transmission energy. For the non-cooperative static game, Nash equilibria in pure and mixed strategies are derived and shown to be Pareto inefficient in general, when channel gains are common knowledge. For the two-player Stackelberg game where the primary user is the leader, it is shown that the secondary user is forced to play as the follower where the Stackelberg equilibrium dominates the Nash equilibrium, even if the eavesdropper channel is better than the primary channel. Here, the utility achieved by the Stackelberg game Pareto-dominates the achieved Nash utility. Moreover, we study the unknown eavesdropper channel case numerically where the primary user has only statistical knowledge about the channel gain. We compare the results to the first scenario and show that it is not always beneficial for the cognitive user to hide the actual eavesdropper channel gain. Finally, we extend the equilibrium analysis to a multiple SU game where the primary system selects a subset of the secondary users to transmit such that the performance of the primary users is maximized.