Practical Modeling and Analysis of Blockchain Radio Access Network

The continually rising demand for wireless services and applications in the era of Internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) presents a significant number of unprecedented challenges to existing network structures. To meet the rapid growth need of mobile data services, blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) has emerged as a decentralized, trustworthy radio access paradigm spurred by blockchain technologies. However, many characteristics of B-RAN remain unclear and hard to characterize. In this study, we develop an analytical framework to model B-RAN and provide some basic fundamental analysis. Starting from block generation, we establish a queuing model based on a time-homogeneous Markov chain. From the queuing model, we evaluate the performance of B-RAN with respect to latency and security considerations. We uncover a more comprehensive picture of the achievable performance of B-RAN by connecting latency and security. At last, we present experimental results via an innovative prototype and validate the proposed model.

I. Introduction

The past decade has witnessed tremendous growth in emerging wireless technologies geared toward diverse applications [1]. Radio access networks (RANs) are becoming more heterogeneous and highly complex. Without well-designed inter-operation, mobile network operators (MNOs) must rely on their independent infrastructures and spectra to deliver data, often leading to duplication, redundancy, and inefficiency. A huge number of currently deployed business or individual access points (APs) have not been coordinated in the existing architecture of RANs, and are therefore under-utilized. Meanwhile, user equipments (UEs) are not granted to access to APs of operators other than their own, even though some of them may provide better link quality and economically sensible. The present state of rising traffic demands coupled with the under-utilization of existing spectra and infrastructure resources motivates the development of a novel network architecture to integrate multiple parties of service providers (SPs) and clients to transform the rigid network access paradigm that we face today.