To meet the rapid growth of mobile communications services, the continuously upgraded wireless networks significantly increase the demand for radio spectrum resources, however the spectrum supply is limited, thus triggering the spectrum demand-supply gap. As a consequence, dynamic spectrum sharing emerges as a promising paradigm of enhancing the spectrum usage, which has been widely recognized and adopted in commercial wireless standards, such as the 4G LTE, 5G NR, and so on. Part of 3GPP Release 15, operators allocate portions of the 4G LTE spectrum that they are already using to 5G NR – this means that 4G LTE and 5G NR users can coexist in the same frequency band/channel at the same time. By a software upgrade, it is possible to use existing RAN to deliver 5G services to unleash the potential of artificial intelligence in mobile networks.

 

Due to the open nature of the dynamic spectrum sharing architecture, various unknown malicious devices could participate in the spectrum sensing, access and management, leading legitimate users to be exposed much more internal and external attacks than ever before. For example, in spectrum sharing systems, a cognitive radio is supposed to be capable of learning its surrounding environment and adapting its operating parameters to any changes in the radio spectrum environment, which, however, could be utilized by malicious users for illegal attacks. To be specific, the malicious users may emit interference signals to intentionally modify the spectrum environment in which the cognitive radio operates, misleading legitimate users and even compromising or causing them to malfunction. Also, in spectrum sharing systems, wireless communications can be easily overheard by an eavesdropper for interception purposes, as long as the eavesdropping attacker lies in the transmit coverage of a source node. It can be observed that the conventional security paradigms (e.g., cryptography and authentication) are insufficient for securing wireless communications, which motivates researchers and scientists to seek new means to complement the traditional security mechanisms and to improve the security of spectrum sharing systems.

 

The primary goal of this special issue is to present the state-of-the-art original research, and latest advances and innovations in key architectures, techniques, schemes, applications, and solutions of wireless security for dynamic spectrum sharing systems. Papers describing algorithms, models, prototypes, implementations, tools, and paradigms are welcome. Survey papers or visionary articles indicating future directions from different perspectives are also encouraged. Extended versions of papers published in conferences, symposium, or workshop proceedings may also be submitted.

 

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2021

Acceptance Notification (1st round): June 15, 2021

Minor Revision Due: July 20, 2021

Final Decision Due: August 10, 2021

Final Manuscript Due: September 20, 2021

Publication Date: December 15, 2021

 

Ying-Chang Liang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China

Yue Gao, University of Surrey, UK

Liang Xiao, Xiamen University, China

Yulong Zou, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China

Guoru Ding, Army Engineering University of PLA, China

 

● Performance limits and bounds of spectrum sharing systems

● Spectrum sensing attacks and countermeasures

● Spectrum access attacks and countermeasures

● Spectrum management attacks and countermeasures

● Authentication and secrecy in spectrum sharing systems
● Blockchain security and privacy for spectrum sharing systems

● Artificial intelligence aided secure spectrum sharing techniques

● Wireless attack modeling and detection in spectrum sharing systems

● Physical-layer security in spectrum sharing systems

● Advanced signal processing for spectrum sharing security

● Interference exploitation and management for spectrum sharing security

● Game-theoretic techniques for spectrum sharing security

● MAC layer vulnerabilities and security mechanisms

● Cross-layer security design, implementation, and analysis

● Experimental results on spectrum sharing security

 

This feature topic “Wireless Security Challenges and Countermeasures for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing” invites submissions of original, previously unpublished technical papers and visionary articles exploring the architecture, techniques, and applications in wireless security for dynamic spectrum sharing. All submissions will be anonymously peer reviewed and will be evaluated on the basis of their technical content. Potential topics of interest include, but not limited to areas listed above.

 

Papers should be submitted in two separate .doc files (preferred) or .pdf files: 1) Main Document (including paper title, abstract, key words, and full text); 2) Title page (including paper title, author affiliation, acknowledgement and any other information related with the authors’ identification) through the Manuscript Central. Please register or login at http://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/chinacomm, then go to the author center and follow the instructions there. Remember to select “Wireless Security Challenges and Countermeasures for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing—December Issue 2021” as your manuscript type when submitting; otherwise, it might be considered as a regular paper.

 

Each submission must be accompanied by the following information:

● an abstract of about 150 words

● 3-8 keywords

● original photographs with high-resolution (300 dpi or greater); eps. or tif. format is preferred; sequentially numbered references.

● sequentially numbered references. The basic reference format is: author name, "article name", issue name (italic), vol., no., page, month, year. for example: Y. M. Huang, "pervateture in wireless heterogeneous…", IEEE Journal on Selected Areas, vol. 27, no. 5, pp 34-50, May, 2009.

● brief biographies of authors (50-75 words)

● contact information, including email and mailing addresses