Data Management for Future Wireless Networks: Architecture, Privacy Preservation, and Regulation

Next-generation wireless networks (NGWN) aim to support diversified smart applications that require frequent data exchanges and collaborative data processing among multiple stakeholders. Data management (DM), including data collection, storage, sharing, and computation, plays an essential role in empowering NGWN. However, DM for NGWN faces two significant challenges: stakeholders' data cannot be easily managed across different trust domains under a distributed network architecture; and privacy preservation requirements of personal data become more rigorous under new privacy regulations. To explore possible solutions to address the challenges, we first investigate the state-of-the-art architecture designs for DM and emphasize advantages of a blockchain-based DM architecture. Then we summarize existing privacy-preserving techniques in terms of advantages and challenges when being applied to DM. In addition, we review recent privacy regulations with their impacts on DM and discuss the existing solutions with privacy regulation compliance based on blockchain. Finally, we identify further research directions for achieving DM with privacy preservation.