A Privacy-Preserving Multidimensional Range Query Scheme for Edge-Supported Industrial IoT

Abstract

Edge-supported Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has recently received significant attention since the edge computing can greatly improve the service quality of IIoT applications. However, edge servers are not fully trusted and are often deployed at the edge of the network. Therefore, there are some security challenges that need to be addressed. For edge-supported IIoT, a privacy-preserving range query is one of the most important functional requirements. Recently, some privacy-preserving range query solutions have been proposed in different fields. However, most of them only support single-dimensional range query, which are inefficient for the requirement of multidimensional range query. To address these problems, we propose a privacy-preserving multidimensional range query scheme for edge-supported IIoT, called Edge-PPMRQ, in this article. In Edge-PPMRQ, a novel range division algorithm is designed, through which the multidimensional ranges can be merged into one range, so as to achieve multidimensional range query through one query request. In addition, Edge-PPMRQ also supports the range queries for continuous, discontinuous, and arbitrary boundary ranges. The detailed security analysis proves that Edge-PPMRQ is privacy preserving for the query ranges, the query results, and the sensed data of IIoT devices. Furthermore, extensive comparison experiments also illustrate that Edge-PPMRQ is efficient in communication and computation.