Reciprocal Altruism as a Rogue Node Detection Mechanism in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks

The rapid increase in wireless devices as society embraces the Internet of Things (loT) has led to saturation of wireless channels. To alleviate congestion in wireless bands, dynamic spectrum access utilizing software defined radio has emerged as a promising solution. In dynamic spectrum access, unlicensed users are allowed to access licensed channels when the license holder is idle. As unlicensed users compete over limited resources, coexistence challenges arise. In this article, we propose a bio-inspired approach to tackle rogue nodes who decide to use more than their fair share of resources. The proposed scheme builds on reciprocal altruism where unlicensed users sacrifice immediate reward by voluntarily relinquishing their band to benefit other unlicensed users transmitting in the band, with the expectation that the behavior will be reciprocated in the future. We show that the reciprocal behavior can be utilized to detect rogue nodes in the system with perfect accuracy. We achieve this in a decentralized manner with minimum communication overhead.