A Blockchain-based Framework for Drone-Mounted Base Stations in Tactile Internet Environment

5G, blockchain, and drones are potentially revolutionizing future technologies. 5G promises to provide a tactile internet environment to the users. Tactile internet is characterized by ultra-low latency, with high reliability, security, and availability. Few attempts have been made in academia and industry to use drones-mounted small cell base stations. Such flying base stations can be used in disaster areas, emergencies, or in rural areas. The major challenge in deploying such flying base stations is data security. Drones being resource-constrained devices cannot be overloaded with heavy security algorithms. Moreover, the decision of user association, drone movement, and bandwidth allocation are major bottlenecks in deploying such networks. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based security framework for drone mounted base stations in the tactile internet environment. Furthermore, a game-theoretic model is proposed as a smart contract to decide on the dynamic bandwidth allocation to different users based on bandwidth availability and cost. Numerical results show that the proposed model helps in better user experience in terms of bandwidth allocation in low network areas.

[1]  Walid Saad,et al.  Mobile Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Energy-Efficient Internet of Things Communications , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[2]  Shalini Batra,et al.  Tree-Based Attack–Defense Model for Risk Assessment in Multi-UAV Networks , 2019, IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine.

[3]  Biplab Sikdar,et al.  BlockCom: A Blockchain Based Commerce Model for Smart Communities using Auction Mechanism , 2019, 2019 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops).

[4]  Mahbub Hassan,et al.  Flying Drone Base Stations for Macro Hotspots , 2018, IEEE Access.

[5]  Vikas Hassija,et al.  A mobile data offloading framework based on a combination of blockchain and virtual voting , 2020, Software, Practice & Experience.

[6]  Ismail Güvenç,et al.  UAV-Based In-Band Integrated Access and Backhaul for 5G Communications , 2018, 2018 IEEE 88th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Fall).

[7]  Dushantha Nalin K. Jayakody,et al.  A Blockchain-Based Framework for Lightweight Data Sharing and Energy Trading in V2G Network , 2020, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[8]  Matti Latva-aho,et al.  Joint Load Balancing and Interference Mitigation in 5G Heterogeneous Networks , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[9]  Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo,et al.  Blockchain Applications for Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT: A Review , 2019, IEEE Access.

[10]  Sergey Andreev,et al.  Flexible and Reliable UAV-Assisted Backhaul Operation in 5G mmWave Cellular Networks , 2018, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[11]  Vinay Chamola,et al.  Blockchain in Smart Grids: A Review on Different Use Cases , 2019, Sensors.