Hash Access: Trustworthy Grant-Free IoT Access Enabled by Blockchain Radio Access Networks.

The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) applications makes the existing network structure insufficient because it is split by multiple non-cooperative operators, does not scale with the future development of IoT, and calls for novel networking concepts and protocols. The need for multi-operator IoT paradigms poses some unprecedented challenges, including trust considerations. To enable a multi-operator network without shared authentication, we propose a trustworthy grant-free IoT access protocol named Hash Access by leveraging a blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) architecture. B-RAN re-organizes multiple individual radio access networks into a joint multi-operator network based on a blockchain. B-RAN can establish trust among initially trustless operators and efficiently utilize resources across networks, matching and creating values for multiple participants. Furthermore, to mitigate the loss of network efficiency caused by selfish behavior among untrustworthy IoT devices, the proposed protocol can induce IoT devices to follow an access rule and control their data traffic. The proposed framework unifies the IoT access and the underlying B-RAN to reduce confirmation delays in traditional blockchains significantly. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance edge for the B-RAN-enabled Hash Access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]