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.
The demand for frequency is continuously increasing owing to the growth of wireless communication devices and the development of network technology. To share frequency effectively in a limited frequency resource environment, studies to develop spectrum-sharing technology should be conducted. In this study, a blockchain-based spectrum- sharing system, in which various types of users can efficiently share spectrum in dense networks, is proposed. Furthermore, a method to apply game theory to obtain cooperation from users who do not participate in the spectrum-sharing system is studied. When the simulation was conducted based on game theory, the proposed blockchain-based spectrum-sharing technique was simulated by using the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy, in which the system cooperates with the users if the users collaborate and the system does not cooperate with the users if the users do not collaborate. Simulations show that there are more than a certain percentage of users who use the TFT strategy, and if users are encouraged to change their sharing strategy on a regular basis, they can provide more efficient spectrum sharing than traditional centralized methods. It was confirmed that this technique can improve spectrum sharing by 55.1% or more through optimization.
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.
B Dinesh, B. Kavya, Dudekula Sivakumar, Mohammed Riyaz Ahmed
While the question of blockchain strengthening the IoT is raised, the conformance test of 5G for blockchain applications becomes inevitable, since 5G is an enabler of IoT. Blockchain demands point-to-point communication to have transaction and 5G is best suited for such LOS communication. The convergence of technological, economic and environmental forces, are driving the 5G and blockchain simultaneously, then each drives the other forward. Be it the 5G driving blockchain or vice-versa, the continued expansion of each is good for the other. The complete suitability of 5G for blockchain applications is yet to be conducted. In this paper, we bring out the individual attributes and expectations of 5G and blockchain and carry out a study on how both can complement each other. The study encompasses how well communication constraints in blockchain is resolved by 5G communication and how the security and privacy issues in 5G are resolved by blockchain. The research we did in the blockchain and 5G, as well as mmWave communication and MIMO technologies, evoke visions of a vast network of connected devices balancing and securing in a deeply connected world. The proliferation of blockchain enabled 5G (or 5G enabled blockchain) will open up new frontiers of services and applications for next-generation communication systems.
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.
Although a massive amount of bandwidth is available at mm-waves, physics dictates the use of legacy frequencies in the sub 6-GHz range. This necessitates dynamic spectrum access in the face of exponentially growing spectral demands. However, disorganized spectrum sharing causes interference, leads to a chaotic situation, and loss of capacity. Moreover, it is difficult to ensure that the primary users are compensated for sharing their licensed bands. We propose a Blockchain-based platform to address these limitations. A digital token, called spectral token, is introduced to validate and track the use of a licensed frequency band while enforcing sequential access to spectrum by secondary users to avoid interference. The proposed platform enables both advertising and sensing based spectrum sharing under different leasing policies. Such sharing and leasing policies are coded into smart contracts, which digitally enforce the contractual clauses of the leasing agreement. When a deal is made, the smart contract automatically transfers the spectral token between primary and secondary users within the agreed time frame while paying the primary user in cryptocurrency. We developed a proof of concept solution using the Ethereum Blockchain to demonstrate the utility of the proposed platform and its throughput and latency characteristics.
The fifth generation of mobile networks is rapidly evolving, fueled by the ever-growing mobile traffic over recent years. Ultra-reliable and low latency provisioning of services with ranging contextual parameters mapped to highly fluctuating levels of quality of service and quality of user experience, render the optimum operation point of the future networks unsustainable. Network coding is emerging once more as a potential key enabler for optimizing bandwidth requirements and energy consumption in highly dense mobile network environments. Nonetheless, network coding deployments still need to consider security vulnerabilities and their countermeasures, before they can be adapted as part of the emerging mobile network deployments. This paper studies the performance of random linear network coding for wireless mobile networks with an emphasis on pollution attacks while proposing a novel blockchain based message authentication scheme in order to minimize delays and signalling costs.
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.