A Secure Decentralized Spatial Crowdsourcing Scheme for 6G-Enabled Network in Box

Due to the safe portability of the device in sixth generation (6G) enabled network in box (NIB) and the mobility of locations, users equipped with the device can have a better experience in spatial crowdsourcing. The integration of NIB with 6G results in a decentralized spatial crowdsourcing in industrial automation, but threatens the security of tasks and answers and also leads to the leakage of sensing nodes’ locations. To address these problems, in this article, we propose a secure decentralized spatial crowdsourcing scheme for 6G-enabled NIB (DSC-NIB). Using DSC-NIB, the control station and sensing nodes can gather and transmit information on the blockchain using NIB, without depending on the third party. The control station shares encrypted location strategy parameters set to negotiate session keys and a group key with sensing nodes whose locations satisfy the location strategy, while ensuring the privacy of sensing nodes’ locations. For the security of tasks and answers, we leverage the Counter with CBC-MAC authenticated encryption mechanism to provide confidentiality and integrity. Furthermore, we analyze the security of the proposed DSC-NIB. Compared with existing approaches, the performance is evaluated and improved by 30--50%. To further optimize the performance, two optimized schemes without sacrificing security are presented and our results demonstrate that performance is improved greatly.