Mika Ylianttila, Raimo Kantola, Andrei Gurtov, Mucchi, Lozenzo · 27 authors
The roles of trust, security and privacy are somewhat interconnected, but different facets of next generation networks. The challenges in creating a trustworthy 6G are multidisciplinary spanning technology, regulation, techno-economics, politics and ethics. This white paper addresses their fundamental research challenges in three key areas. Trust: Under the current "open internet" regulation, the telco cloud can be used for trust services only equally for all users. 6G network must support embedded trust for increased level of information security in 6G. Trust modeling, trust policies and trust mechanisms need to be defined. 6G interlinks physical and digital worlds making safety dependent on information security. Therefore, we need trustworthy 6G. Security: In 6G era, the dependence of the economy and societies on IT and the networks will deepen. The role of IT and the networks in national security keeps rising - a continuation of what we see in 5G. The development towards cloud and edge native infrastructures is expected to continue in 6G networks, and we need holistic 6G network security architecture planning. Security automation opens new questions: machine learning can be used to make safer systems, but also more dangerous attacks. Physical layer security techniques can also represent efficient solutions for securing less investigated network segments as first line of defense. Privacy: There is currently no way to unambiguously determine when linked, deidentified datasets cross the threshold to become personally identifiable. Courts in different parts of the world are making decisions about whether privacy is being infringed, while companies are seeking new ways to exploit private data to create new business revenues. As solution alternatives, we may consider blockchain, distributed ledger technologies and differential privacy approaches.
Hao Xu, Paulo Valente Klaine, Oluwakayode Onireti, Bin Cao · 6 authors
The sixth-generation (6G) network must provide better performance than previous generations to meet the requirements of emerging services and applications, such as multi-gigabit transmission rate, higher reliability, and sub-1 ms latency and ubiquitous connection for the Internet of Everything (IoE). However, with the scarcity of spectrum resources, efficient resource management and sharing are crucial to achieving all these ambitious requirements. One possible technology to achieve all this is the blockchain. Because of its inherent properties, the blockchain has recently gained an important position, which is of great significance to the 6G network and other networks. In particular, the integration of the blockchain in 6G will enable the network to monitor and manage resource utilization and sharing efficiently. Hence, in this paper, we discuss the potentials of the blockchain for resource management and sharing in 6G using multiple application scenarios, namely, Internet of things, device-to-device communications, network slicing, and inter-domain blockchain ecosystems.
The world is going through a fundamental transformation with the emergence of the intelligent information era. The key domains linked with human life such as healthcare, transport, entertainment, and smart cities are expected to elevate the quality of service with high-end user experience. Therefore, the telecommunication infrastructure has to meet unprecedented service level requirements such as ultra high data rates and traffic volume for the prominent future applications such as Virtual Reality (VR), holographic communications, and massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC). There are significant challenges identifiable in the communication context to match the envisaged demand surge. The blockchain and distributed ledger technology is one of the most disruptive technology enablers to address most of the current limitations and facilitate the functional standards of 6G. In this work, we explore the role of blockchain to address formidable challenges in 6G, future application opportunities and potential research directions.
Mohammad Tahir, Mohamed Hadi Habaebi, Mohammad Dabbagh, Amna Mughees · 6 authors
Until now, every evolution of communication standard was driven by the need for providing high-speed connectivity to the end-user. However, 5G marks a radical shift from this focus as 5G and beyond networks are being designed to be future-proof by catering to diverse requirements of several use cases. These requirements include Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications, Massive Machine-Type Communications and Enhanced Mobile Broadband. To realize such features in 5G and beyond, there is a need to rethink how current cellular networks are deployed because designing new radio access technologies and utilizing the new spectrum are not enough. Several technologies, such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, machine learning and cloud computing, are being integrated into the 5G networks to fulfil the need for diverse requirements. These technologies, however, give rise to several challenges associated with decentralization, transparency, interoperability, privacy and security. To address these issues, Blockchain has emerged as a potential solution due to its capabilities such as transparency, data encryption, auditability, immutability and distributed architecture. In this paper, we review the state-of-art application of Blockchain in 5G network and explore how it can facilitate enabling technologies of 5G and beyond to enable various services at the front-haul, edge and the core. Based on the review, we present a taxonomy of Blockchain application in 5G networks and discuss several issues that can be solved using Blockchain integration. We then present various field-trials and Proof of concept that are using Blockchain to address the challenges faced in the current 5G deployment. Finally, we discuss various challenges that need to be addressed to realize the full potential of Blockchain in beyond 5G networks. The survey presents a broad range of ideas related to Blockchain integration in 5G and beyond networks that address issues such as interoperability, security, mobility, resource allocation, resource sharing and management, energy efficiency and other desirable features.
Internet of Things (IoT) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) technology acts as a significant part of daily lives to facilitate control and monitoring of objects to revolutionize the ways that human interacts with physical world. IoT system includes large volume of data with network connectivity, power, and storage resources to transform data into meaningful information. Blockchain has decentralized nature to provide useful mechanism for addressing IoT challenges. Blockchain is distributed ledger with fundamental attributes, namely recorded, transparent, and decentralized. Blockchain formed participants in distributed ledger to record the transactions and communicate with other through trustless method. Security is considered as the most valuable features of Blockchain. IoT and Blockchain are emerging ideas for creating the applications to share the intrinsic features. Several existing works has been developed for the integration of blockchain with IoT. But, Blockchain protocols in the state-of-the-art works with IoT failed to consider the computational loads, delays, and bandwidth overhead which lead to new set of problems. The review estimates main challenges in integration of Blockchain and IoT technologies to attain high-level solutions by addressing the shortcomings and limitations of IoT and Blockchain technologies.
Abir El Azzaoui, Sushil Kumar Singh, Yi Pan, Jong Hyuk Park
Nowadays, 5G network is considered to be one of the main pillars of various industries, including the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, virtual reality, and many more. Unlike previous network generations, 5G utilizes complex digital technologies such as massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (mMIMO) and runs over higher radio frequencies. The introduction of new technologies and advanced features in the 5G network raises new challenges for network operators, and merging Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the effective solutions to address these complexities. However, AI-enabled 5G network engenders security concerns and requires improvement to meet the standardization and qualification of the new network generation. To mitigate these dilemmas, Blockchain must be integrated. Blockchain, as a decentralized methodology provides a secure sharing of information and resources among various nodes of 5G environments. Blockchain can support other technologies, such as AI-based 5G, to create smarter, more efficient, and secure cellular networks. In this article, we present a comprehensive intelligence and secure data analytics framework for 5G networks based on the convergence of Blockchain and AI named “Block5GIntell”. We depict the applications of Blockchain and AI on 5G networks separately and we argue on the support that Blockchain can provide for AI to create smart and secure 5G networks relying on our proposed framework. To support our proposition, we present an energy-saving case study using Blockchain for AI-enabled 5G. The simulation shows an overall 20% decrease in energy consumption at the RAN level.
Latif U. Khan, Ibrar Yaqoob, Muhammad Imran, Zhu Han · 5 authors
Internet of everything (IoE)-based smart services are expected to gain immense popularity in the future, which raises the need for next-generation wireless networks. Although fifth-generation (5G) networks can support various IoE services, they might not be able to completely fulfill the requirements of novel applications. Sixth-generation (6G) wireless systems are envisioned to overcome 5G network limitations. In this article, we explore recent advances made toward enabling 6G systems. We devise a taxonomy based on key enabling technologies, use cases, emerging machine learning schemes, communication technologies, networking technologies, and computing technologies. Furthermore, we identify and discuss open research challenges, such as artificial-intelligence-based adaptive transceivers, intelligent wireless energy harvesting, decentralized and secure business models, intelligent cell-less architecture, and distributed security models. We propose practical guidelines including deep Q-learning and federated learning-based transceivers, blockchain-based secure business models, homomorphic encryption, and distributed-ledger-based authentication schemes to cope with these challenges. Finally, we outline and recommend several future directions.
Dinh C. Nguyen, Pubudu N. Pathirana, Ming Ding, Aruna Seneviratne
The fifth generation (5G) wireless networks are on the way to be deployed around the world. The 5G technologies target to support diverse vertical applications by connecting heterogeneous devices and machines with drastic improvements in terms of high quality of service, increased network capacity and enhanced system throughput. Despite all these advantages that 5G will bring about, there are still major challenges to be addressed, including decentralization, transparency, risks of data interoperability, network privacy and security vulnerabilities. Blockchain can offer innovative solutions to effectively solve the challenges in 5G networks. Driven by the dramatically increased capacities of the 5G networks and the recent breakthroughs in the blockchain technology, blockchain-based 5G services are expected to witness a rapid development and bring substantial benefits to future society. In this paper, we provide a state-of-art survey on the integration of blockchain with 5G networks and beyond. Our key focus is on the discussions on the potential of blockchain for enabling key 5G technologies, including cloud/edge computing, Software Defined Networks, Network Function Virtualization, Network Slicing, and D2D communications. We then explore the opportunities of blockchain to important 5G services, ranging from spectrum management, network virtualization, resource management to interference management, federated learning, privacy and security provision. The recent advances in the applications of blockchain in 5G Internet of Things are also surveyed in various domains, i.e. smart healthcare, smart city, smart transportation, smart grid and UAVs. The main findings derived from the survey are then summarized, and possible research challenges with open issues are also identified. Lastly, we complete this survey by shedding new light on future directions of research on this newly emerging area.
Onel L. Alcaraz López, Hirley Alves, Richard Demo Souza, Samuel Montejo‐Sánchez · 6 authors
Recent advances on wireless energy transfer (WET) make it a promising\nsolution for powering future Internet of Things (IoT) devices enabled by the\nupcoming sixth generation (6G) era. The main architectures, challenges and\ntechniques for efficient and scalable wireless powering are overviewed in this\npaper. Candidates enablers such as energy beamforming (EB), distributed antenna\nsystems (DAS), advances on devices' hardware and programmable medium, new\nspectrum opportunities, resource scheduling and distributed ledger technology\nare outlined. Special emphasis is placed on discussing the suitability of\nchannel state information (CSI)-limited/free strategies when powering\nsimultaneously a massive number of devices. The benefits from combining DAS and\nEB, and from using average CSI whenever available, are numerically illustrated.\nThe pros and cons of the state-of-the-art CSI-free WET techniques in ultra-low\npower setups are thoroughly revised, and some possible future enhancements are\noutlined. Finally, key research directions towards realizing WET-enabled\nmassive IoT networks in the 6G era are identified and discussed in detail.\n
Junfei Qiu, David Grace, Guoru Ding, Junnan Yao · 5 authors
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are envisioned to be widely deployed as an integral component in the next generation cellular networks, where spectrum sharing between the aerial and terrestrial communication systems will play an important role. However, there exist significant security and privacy challenges due to the untrusted broadcast features and wireless transmission of the UAV networks. This article endeavors to resolve the security issues through proposing a novel privacy-preserving secure spectrum trading and sharing scheme based on blockchain technology. Specifically, from the operator's perspective, a pricing-based incentive mechanism is first introduced, in which a primary mobile network operator (MNO) leases its owned spectrum to a secondary UAV network in exchange for some revenue from the UAV operators. To address the potential security issues, a spectrum blockchain framework is then proposed to illustrate detailed operations of how the blockchain helps to improve the spectrum trading environment. Under this framework, a Stackelberg game is formulated to jointly maximize the profits of the MNO and the UAV operators considering uniform and nonuniform pricing schemes. Security assessment and numerical results confirm the security and efficiency of our schemes for spectrum sharing in UAV-assisted cellular networks.
Network coding has emerged as a promising solution to the highly efficient and reliable network requirements for the next generation communication technology. Network coding enabled small cell environment can assure an efficient device to device communication with the high data rate. However, the security challenges inherent to network coding, like pollution attacks, drags a layer of concern over its implementation. Further, the re-encoding of packets at the intermediate nodes makes it difficult to secure network coding enabled communication using standard cryptographic techniques. Homomorphic message authentication codes and signatures are used to tackle this problem. We propose a network coding enabled small cell environment enhanced by blockchain to prevent pollution attacks. The architecture of this blockchain enhanced SECRET small cell along with an analysis of the communication overhead and latency issues are discussed in this paper.
Mark A. Graham, Ayalvadi Ganesh, Robert J. Piechocki
The emergence of new connectivity services for automated transportation marks a paradigm shift for the operation of wireless networks. Furthermore, the advent of blockchain technology promises to enable a plethora of smart mobility services, which are not contingent on any central authorities. Concepts such as distributed ledger require efficient and reliable data dissemination between vehicles. Traditional techniques based on Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) are well known to scale poorly in all-cast networks due to the feedback implosion problem. Fountain and network coding techniques are arguably the most promising alternative solutions. In this paper we derive new analytical bounds on transmit message lengths and quantify bandwidth delay trade-offs for fountain coding based data dissemination for CAVs.
The device-to-device (D2D) communication is one of the promising technologies of the future Internet of Things (IoT), but its security-related issues remain challenging. The block-chain is considered to be a secure and reliable distributed ledger, so we can treat the device user equipment (D-UE) request for the reusing resources of cellular user equipment (C-UE) as a transaction and put it into a transaction pool, then package the record into the block-chain. In this paper, we study the D2D communication resource allocation scheme based on sparse code multiple access (SCMA). Firstly, the system's interference model and block-chain-based transaction flow are analyzed. Then we propose the optimization problem so that C-UE can get the maximum revenue by sharing its resources to D-UE. This problem is NP-hard, so we propose a heuristic algorithm based on semi-definite relaxation (SDR) programming to solve it. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by simulation of different system parameters.
Anik Islam, Mohammed Belal Uddin, Md. Fazlul Kader, Soo Young Shin
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation receiver is considered as one of the most potent multiple access techniques to be adopted in future wireless communication networks. Data security in the NOMA transmission scheme is on much attention drawing issue. Blockchain is a distributed peer-to-peer network enables a way of protecting information from unauthorized access, tempering etc. By utilizing encryption techniques of blockchain, a secured data communication scheme using blockchain in NOMA is proposed in this paper. A two-phase encryption technique with key generation using different parameter is proposed. In the first-phase data is encrypted by imposing users' public key and in the second phase, a private key of the base station (BS) is engaged for encryption. Finally, the superiority of the proposed scheme over existing scheme is proven through a comparative study based on the different features.