A Hybrid BlockChain-Based Identity Authentication Scheme for Multi-WSN

TLDR

IoT devices operate in harsh environments where security is critical, yet traditional identity authentication relies on trusted third parties, creating single points of failure that many IoT deployments cannot tolerate, and blockchain’s decentralization offers a promising alternative. This work proposes a blockchain‑based multi‑WSN authentication scheme for IoT. The scheme organizes nodes into base stations, cluster heads, and ordinary nodes, builds a hybrid blockchain with local and public chains, and uses the local chain for ordinary‑node authentication and the public chain for cluster‑head authentication. Security and performance analyses demonstrate that the scheme provides comprehensive security while outperforming conventional approaches.

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) equipment is usually in a harsh environment, and its security has always been a widely concerned issue. Node identity authentication is an important means to ensure its security. Traditional IoT identity authentication protocols usually rely on trusted third parties. However, many IoT environments do not allow such conditions, and are prone to single point failure. Blockchain technology with decentralization features provides a new solution for distributed IoT system. In this paper, a blockchain based multi-WSN authentication scheme for IoT is proposed. The nodes of IoT are divided into base stations, cluster head nodes and ordinary nodes according to their capability differences, which are formed to a hierarchical network. A blockchain network is constructed among different types of nodes to form a hybrid blockchain model, including local chain and public chain. In this hybrid model, nodes identity mutual authentication in various communication scenarios is realized, ordinary node identity authentication operation is accomplished by local blockchain, and cluster head node identity authentication are realized in public blockchain. The analysis of security and performance shows that the scheme has comprehensive security and better performance.