EAGER: SaTC: CORE: Small: Decentralized Data Assurance by Fair Proof of Work Consensus Federated Ledgers

Suny At Binghamton, Binghamton NY

Investigators

Abstract

Moving toward the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond 5G (B5G) wireless networks envisions a pervasively-deployed and data-driven intelligent edge network integrating machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). One of the most attractive features of an intelligent B5G network is to share data among objects to collaboratively make comprehensive decisions and provide better services to people. A huge amount of data is produced and collected by Internet of Things (IoT) connected through the BSG edge networks. Breach of integrity, authentication, or privacy of data may cause disastrous consequences as the dependence of the economy and societies on the security of data also deepen. B5G-based IoT applications must meet highly dynamic and diverse requirements in terms of latency, reliability, data rate, and user-defined performance metrics. In addition, most of the data is locally significant, which is generated, collected, processed on-site or near-site for instant decision making. Transmitting these data to a remote cloud center not only causes unnecessary delays but also wastes precious resources. Instead, there is a need for decentralized, online solutions that can proactively adapt to the B5G edge network dynamics. This project will advance the research frontier of data security in B5G wireless network enabled intelligent edge computing paradigm. Aiming at paving the way to make blockchain an organic part of future intelligent networks, the investigator proposes a novel Federated Ledgers Architecture with fair proof-of-work (PoW) consensus enabled by Miner-twins in the Edge-fog-cloud paradigm (FLAME). Leveraging the Digital Twins (DT) and Microservices architecture, FLAME is a scale-able, decentralized data security solution for highly heterogeneous B5G IoT networks. This project consists of two technical components: (1) a Federated ledgers-based Decentralized Data Management (Fed-DDM) scheme for data assurance in hierarchical edge networks; and (2) a novel edge-fog-cloud Miner-Twins (MinT) architecture to enable a Fair-Mining-as-a-Service (FMaaS) consensus mechanism in heterogeneous blockchain networks at the edge. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.