On the security of cooperative cognitive radio networks with distributed beamforming

Abstract This paper investigates the secrecy performance of amplify-and-forward (AF)-relaying cooperative cognitive radio networks (CCRNs) over Rayleigh-fading channels. Specifically, we consider practical passive eavesdropping scenarios, where the channel state information of the eavesdropper’s link is not available at the secondary transmitter. In order to avoid interfering with the primary receiver and enhance the secrecy performance, collaborative distributed beamforming is adopted at the secondary relays. Closed-form and asymptotic expressions for the secrecy outage probability of CCRNs in the presence of single and multiple non-colluding eavesdroppers are derived. The asymptotic analysis reveals that the achievable secrecy diversity order of collaborative distributed beamforming with M AF relays is M−1 regardless of the number of eavesdroppers. In addition, simulations are conducted to validate the accuracy of our analytical results