Blockchain-based differentiated authentication mechanism for 6G heterogeneous networks

Abstract It is well known that the Sixth Generation (6G) communication system integrating multiple access networks promotes the internet of everything world-widely. However, due to the differentiated underlying network protocols, it is difficult to find a general authentication solution to support various authentication methods in different access networks. Blockchain is a new technology that supports network heterogeneity, which provides a potential solution for differentiated authentication. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based differentiated authentication mechanism for 6G Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), which can efficiently authenticate user identities through scheduling different authentication methods. Particularly, we analyze the authentication architecture of 6G HetNets and put forward a blockchain-based differentiated authentication framework. Besides, to improve the scalability of user authentication, it is the first time to use various blockchain authentication contracts to represent different authentication methods. Meanwhile, a differentiated authentication management contract is proposed to uniformly manage different authentication contracts to realize differentiated identity authentication. Based on the evaluation of the prototype system, the proposed mechanism can dynamically provide differentiated authentication services (e.g. EAP-MD5, 5G-AKA) with low additional time (milliseconds levels) cost.