Optimal deception in cognitive radio security: a joint Nash equilibrium approach to rate adaptation and frequency hopping under jamming

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICECCE67514.2025.11257994

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are highly vulnerable to intelligent jammers that adaptively exploit spectral dynamics to disrupt communication. This work proposes a joint deception-based anti-jamming framework that integrates pseudo secondary users (PSUs) with a non-cooperative game model of rate adaptation and frequency hopping. The interaction between secondary users (SUs) and an adaptive jammer is formulated as a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium (NE), where the SU's utility function incorporates both channel capacity and risk-aversion, and the jammer optimizes disruption by targeting high-capacity channels. Closed-form equilibrium strategies are derived, showing that SUs probabilistically avoid high-risk channels, while PSUs increase the jammer's attraction probability, diverting attacks away from genuine users. Simulation results demonstrate that higher PSU attraction probabilities ($\delta_{p}= 0.7-0.9$) significantly reduce jamming probability across risk-aversion levels, enabling SUs to exploit high-capacity channels with improved robustness.