Blockchain-based security model for efficient data transmission and storage in cloudlet network resource environment.

Abstract

As mobile users’ service requirement increases, applications such as online games, virtual reality, and augmented reality demand for more computation power. However, the current design of mobile devices and their associated innovations cannot accommodate such applications because of the limitations they have in terms storage, computing power and battery life. Therefore, as a result, mobile devices offload their tasks to the remote cloud environments. Moreover, due to the architecture of cloud computing, where cloud is located at the core of the network, applications experiences challenges such as latency. This is a disadvantage to real-time online applications. Hence, the edge computing based cloudlet environment was introduced to bring resources closer to the end user, with an enhanced network quality of service. Although there is merit in deploying cloudlets at the edge of the network, which is closer to the user, this makes them susceptible to attacks. For this newly introduced technology to be fully adopted, effective security measures need to be incorporated into the current cloudlets computing platform. This study proposes blockchain technology as a security model in securing the data shared between mobile devices and cloudlet, with an agent layer concept introduced in between mobile device layer and cloudlet. The implemented agent-based model uses the new consensus mechanism, proof of trust where trust and experience is determine by the number of coins each node (cloudlet) possess, to select two miners. These miners participate in message verification using Elliptic curve scheme, and if they do not reach consensus, a third miner is selected to resolve the conflict. Any miner with wrong verification loses all the coins; in this way trust and experience is controlled. This proposed solution has proven to be more efficient in terms of security and network performance in comparison to existing state-of-the-arts implementations.