Analysis of the Vulnerability of the Incumbent Frequency to Inference Attacks in Spectrum Sharing

Published

January 7, 2017

Author(s)

Azza Ben Mosbah, Timothy Hall, Michael R. Souryal, Hossam Afifi

Abstract

Sharing between commercial and Federal incumbent users, such as in the 3.5 GHz band, is expected to increase the availability of spectrum for wireless broadband use. However, the spectrum coordination needed between incumbent and commercial users gives rise to several privacy concerns. This paper analyzes the vulnerability of the incumbent's operational center frequency to disclosure from inference attacks. We evaluate the inherent protection provided by various channel assignment schemes in terms of the time required for an attacker to infer the incumbent's frequency. We account for the activity of secondary users in a dynamically-shared environment. This analysis allows the Spectrum Access System to quantify privacy for a given secondary load. It also provides an analytical framework to quantify the effectiveness of countermeasures such as limiting the query rate of secondaries.

Conference Dates

January 8-11, 2017

Conference Location

Las Vegas, NV, US

Conference Title

2017 IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC)

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC.2017.7983204

Local Download

Keywords

3.5 GHz, channel assignment, Federal bands, inference attack, privacy protection, spectrum sharing

Citation

Ben Mosbah, A. , Hall, T. , Souryal, M. and Afifi, H. (2017), Analysis of the Vulnerability of the Incumbent Frequency to Inference Attacks in Spectrum Sharing, 2017 IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), Las Vegas, NV, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC.2017.7983204, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=921100 (Accessed October 10, 2025)