Sec-edge: Trusted blockchain system for enabling the identification and authentication of edge based 5G networks

Abstract

The 5th generation 5G technology, also known as the 2020 telecommunications system, represents the next exciting phase of the evolution of telecommunications, with the recent successful distribution on nearly every continent. 5G is believed to bring multiple advancements such as greater transmission speeds, ultra-low latency, higher network capacity, etc. These advancements will directly support the industry-5.0 and Internet of Things (IoT) in the coming future. Today, IoT is one of the fastest-growing technologies because of its ability to deliver multiple applications across various devices. The emergence of 5G networks will be a major force for IoT development. Subsequently, Edge computing as an extension of cloud computing has emerged as a promising technology to empower 5G and IoT services due to its close vicinity to IoT Devices. However, specific challenging issues plague the integration of 5G, IoT, and Edge Computing, among which security is one of the biggest concerns. Recently, blockchain has been provided as a foundational and decentralized distributed ledger technology that can be used for solving the challenges of IoT, 5G, and Edge Computing integration. This paper proposes a trusted blockchain system for edge-based 5G networks that eliminates the limitations of integrating the Edge Computing, IoT, and 5G networks. The proposed blockchain system can efficiently identify the edge devices, authenticate the devices, and assign the addresses to the edge devices on a demand basis. Further, the proposed work also provides the secure communication among the edge devices that can protect from DDOS and Side-channel attacks.