A Lightweight Physical Layer Authentication-Based Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Edge Networks

With the surging magnification of IoT applications, the low latency and security are the major challenges. To counteract these challenges, the integration of blockchain in edge network is mandated to offer reduced network overhead, transparency, decentralization and fault tolerance. The respective network nodes are capable of collaborating effectively through blockchain consensus mechanism. However, the major bottleneck is the complexity of consensus mechanism. Hence, to perform efficient realization of blockchain in edge network, we propose an exclusive idea of integrating Physical Layer Authentication (PLA) with consensus to put forth Proof-of-Physical-Layer-Authentication (PoPLA) consensus mechanism. Also, we propose a Byzantine Likelihood Filtering (BLF) approach to deliver Byzantine tolerance with reduced communication complexity. The experimental evaluation of PoPLA is performed on Long Range (LoRa) Wide Area Network (WAN). The PoPLA reduces the mining time by 76.25%, 42.13% and 30.05% in comparison with Proof of Work (PoW), Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) and RAFT respectively. The BLF enables PoPLA to outperform PBFT by reducing communication complexity from O(N-2) to O(N) while increasing Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) level from 33% to 50% faulty nodes. The cryptanalysis showcases that the PoPLA is resistant to security attacks in blockchain network at edge.