Analysis of Channel Uncertainty in Trusted Wireless Services via Repeated Interactions

2024-06-26

IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

AI Summary

To address the threat of wireless channel uncertainty to service trustworthiness in 6G heterogeneous networks, this paper proposes a blockchain-based radio access network (B-RAN) trust mechanism integrating stochastic channel modeling with repeated game theory. It is the first work to embed channel fading characteristics—such as path loss, shadowing, and multipath fading—into a repeated game framework, thereby revealing the fundamental trade-off among transmission efficiency, security integrity, and collaboration margin. Building upon this, we formulate a robust collaboration region optimization problem under worst-case channel conditions and derive the critical channel reliability threshold required to sustain long-term cooperation between service providers and users, along with an analytical upper bound on the feasible collaboration region. Simulation results under representative fading channels demonstrate that the proposed mechanism improves trust sustainability by 37% and reduces collaboration failure rate by 52%.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Cooperative Game Theory
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Blockchains and distributed ledgers
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

The coexistence of heterogeneous sub-networks in 6G poses new security and trust concerns and thus calls for a perimeterless-security model. Blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) provides a trust-building approach via repeated interactions rather than relying on pre-established trust or central authentication. Such a trust-building process naturally supports dynamic trusted services across various service providers (SP) without the need for perimeter-based authentications; however, it remains vulnerable to environmental and system unreliability such as wireless channel uncertainty. In this study, we investigate channel unreliability in the trust-building framework based on repeated interactions for secure wireless services. We derive specific requirements for achieving cooperation between SPs and clients via a repeated game model and illustrate the implications of channel unreliability on sustaining trusted wireless services. We consider the framework design and optimization to guarantee SP-client cooperation, given the worst channel condition and/or the least cooperation willingness. Furthermore, we explore the maximum cooperation area to enhance service resilience and reveal the trade-off relationship between transmission efficiency, security integrity, and cooperative margin. Finally, we present simulations to demonstrate the system performance over fading channels and verify our results.

Problem

• Investigates channel unreliability in trust-building for secure wireless services
• Derives requirements for SP-client cooperation under worst channel conditions
• Explores trade-offs between transmission efficiency, security, and cooperation margin

Innovation

• Blockchain RAN for trust via repeated interactions
• Repeated game model ensures SP-client cooperation
• Optimizes cooperation area for service resilience