Blockchain-enabled Secure Data Communication Protocols for 5G Networks
Received: 14 November 2024 | Revised: 5 December 2024 | Accepted: 22 December 2024 | Online: 2 February 2025
Corresponding author: Mohanad Sameer Jabar
Abstract
With the further expansion of 5G networks, a main priority continues to shift towards secure and efficient protocols for data transmission. Traditional 5G security mechanisms, such as 3GPP AKA protocols, have limitations in scalability, latency, and resilience against cyber threats, making them quite unsuitable for complex high-density 5G environments. This study proposes a Secure Blockchain-based Data Transmission Protocol (SBDTP) with the decentralized and tamper-resistant feature of blockchain, combined with a hybrid consensus mechanism driven by Proof of Stake (PoS) or Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). In this respect, this study contributes to state-of-the-art research efforts in the field of enhancing data integrity, authentication, and confidentiality with reduced latency and energy consumption in 5G applications. Extensive simulations showed that SBDTP outperformed previous solutions by a large margin. This protocol reduces latency to 50-80 ms, increases throughput to 900 pps, allows up to 1000 nodes without performance degradation, and reduces energy consumption to 0.8 J per node. It also maintains a very close-to-perfection data integrity check rate of ~100% and a very minimal privacy loss rate of less than 1%, showing strong security that could serve well for real-time 5G applications such as IoT networks, autonomous vehicles, and smart cities. These results show that SBDTP offers an efficient and secure solution for data transmission over 5G networks, outperforming traditional and blockchain-based methods while fulfilling the tight requirements posed by next-generation networks. In the future, the protocol should be optimized for scalability, including further advanced privacy techniques to widen its adaptability to diverse 5G applications.
Keywords:
5G security, blockchain, data transmission protocol, networks, computer scienceDownloads
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