A comprehensive study on IoT privacy and security challenges with focus on spectrum sharing in Next-Generation networks (5G/6G/beyond)

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has triggered a massive digital transformation across numerous sectors. This transformation requires efficient wireless communication and connectivity, which depend on the optimal utilization of the available spectrum resource. Given the limited availability of spectrum resources, spectrum sharing has emerged as a favored solution to empower IoT deployment and connectivity, so adequate planning of the spectrum resource utilization is thus essential to pave the way for the next generation of IoT applications, including 5G and beyond. This article presents a comprehensive study of prevalent wireless technologies employed in the field of the spectrum, with a primary focus on spectrum-sharing solutions, including shared spectrum. It highlights the associated security and privacy concerns when the IoT devices access the shared spectrum. This survey examines the benefits and drawbacks of various spectrum-sharing technologies and their solutions for various IoT applications. Lastly, it identifies future IoT obstacles and suggests potential research directions to address them. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Shandong University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).