The sixth-generation (6G) wireless network will bring major advances in ubiquitous connectivity, support massive device deployments, and open up new opportunities for diverse and decentralized Internet of things (IoT) applications. However, it also raises inherent trust issues, as IoT devices controlled by various independent entities cannot fully trust each other, thereby complicating secure and efficient random access control. To address this challenge, existing research turns to blockchain technology as a promising secure and trusted solution. This paper aims to explore and analyze blockchain-enhanced random access management from a game-theoretic perspective. We first investigate the well-known rogue’s dilemma during random access process, where selfish devices exploit access protocols and reduce system fairness. Next, we construct a two-device mixed-strategy game to illustrate the strategic interaction between honest and selfish IoT devices. To capture realistic behaviors under bounded rationality, we extend the analysis to a multi-device scenario with evolutionary game theory and replicator dynamics. Numerical results show that unregulated selfish behavior severely reduces IoT network efficiency. In contrast, blockchain-based penalties effectively discourage malicious actions and promote stable and efficient access equilibria.

The rapid evolution of blockchain has established it as a critical enabler for decentralized zero-trust services and networks. Without relying on traditional trust mechanisms such as pre-established mutual trust or central authentication, blockchain facilitates trust-free services via smart contract. Smart contracts offer verifiable software trust for various blockchain-enabled services (BESs) while protecting participants’ interests. However, the impact of blockchain on BES remains underexplored and unclear. In this work, we consider a general BES framework suitable for diverse decentralized zero-trust services and assess the role of blockchain in BES. We first build anM/G/1-type queuing model for BES and establish the stability conditions using matrix analytic methods. Based on the stability conditions, we identify the blockchain scalability and server capability as two critical bottlenecks of BES. We further use a tandem queuing model to describe the BES latency of the assembling and service phases. We analytically characterize the properties such as the convexity of service-phase latency with respect to traffic intensity, and highlight the BES pooling effects from traffic offloading and resource sharing. At last, we verify our conclusions through simulations and explore potential pathways for more efficient BES frameworks.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a disruptive paradigm that facilitates effective offloading from clouds and enables processing tasks near users. With the surge of mobile data traffic and escalating demands for responsive wireless services, it becomes imperative to enhance trust, security, and efficiency within MEC environments. Blockchain technology, renowned for its immutability, transparency, and security, has proven to be a compelling solution for securing data, enhancing supervision, and fostering trusted collaborations among heterogeneous MEC stakeholders. Despite these advantages, integrating blockchain with MEC also introduces a substantial efficiency bottleneck. Specifically, the blockchain consensus process can result in the aging of critical MEC system information, causing users to perform suboptimal service decisions, thus risking a degradation in service performance. To analyze this bottleneck, we first explore a blockchain-based MEC model that ensures secure task processing across diverse stakeholders. We employ the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) consensus to validate and share service statuses, providing critical on-chain references for users to select their preferred target MEC servers. We then introduce the age-of-information (AoI) as a metric of freshness to characterize the aging of status reports, identifying variable consensus delay as a key factor affecting AoI. We reveal the critical impact of AoI on MEC service performance through analysis, challenging the notion that a lower AoI always leads to better performance. Finally, we validate our analysis and findings through comprehensive simulations.

Blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) offers a promising solution for trustworthy wireless applications by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts. However, the existing literature falls short in addressing the corresponding modeling and theoretical analysis. In this study, we develop analytical models to characterize the wireless access process in B-RAN, which also sheds light on other blockchain-enabled services. We first construct a two-dimensional queuing model and identify both blockchain scalability and RAN capability as two system bottlenecks, and then introduce the matrix analytic method to reduce complexity and improve efficiency. Furthermore, we build tandem queuing models for obtaining tight latency bounds with closed-form expressions. The performance and complexity of the proposed models are evaluated and compared against existing benchmarks to provide a comprehensive perspective. Finally, we present experimental results from a lab-built B-RAN prototype to demonstrate the efficacy of our models.

Recently, blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) arises as an innovative paradigm for the sixth-generation (6G) wireless communications to build cooperative trust, aggregate wireless resources, and schedule inter- and intra-network tasks among independent network entities. It establishes an open platform based on blockchain to provide diverse wireless services and applications, such as radio access, Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile-edge computing, via trusted interactions with enhanced security and efficiency. As a distinctive feature, B-RAN enables secure and efficient resource sharing and trading by aggregating, pooling, and coordinating resources from multiple resource hosts and owners across subnetworks. Therefore, an implementable architecture along with various functional modules shall be delicately designed. This work aims to establish a unified architecture with enhanced efficiency, security, compatibility, and flexibility for resource sharing and trading in B-RAN. Specifically, we develop a six-layer architecture that incorporates a number of novel features, such as enhanced blockchain structures, secure interaction methods, efficient service mechanisms, and scalable transaction patterns. We design a number of pluggable functional modules in each layer to support diverse functions, services, and applications of resource sharing and trading. Finally, we implement a practical prototype based on the layered architecture for resource-limited devices. Multiple experiments are presented to verify the performance of the proposed architecture from different aspects.

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.