Blockchain-enabled resource management and sharing for 6G communications

TLDR

The sixth‑generation network must deliver multi‑gigabit rates, higher reliability, sub‑1 ms latency, and ubiquitous IoE connectivity, but spectrum scarcity makes efficient resource management and sharing essential, and blockchain’s inherent properties are increasingly seen as key to meeting these demands. The paper investigates blockchain as a technology to enable efficient resource management and sharing in 6G across scenarios such as IoT, device‑to‑device, network slicing, and inter‑domain ecosystems. By integrating blockchain into 6G, the network can monitor and manage resource utilization and sharing efficiently, and the study explores this integration across IoT, device‑to‑device, network slicing, and inter‑domain blockchain ecosystems.

Abstract

The sixth-generation (6G) network must provide better performance than previous generations to meet the requirements of emerging services and applications, such as multi-gigabit transmission rate, higher reliability, and sub-1 ​ms latency and ubiquitous connection for the Internet of Everything (IoE). However, with the scarcity of spectrum resources, efficient resource management and sharing are crucial to achieving all these ambitious requirements. One possible technology to achieve all this is the blockchain. Because of its inherent properties, the blockchain has recently gained an important position, which is of great significance to the 6G network and other networks. In particular, the integration of the blockchain in 6G will enable the network to monitor and manage resource utilization and sharing efficiently. Hence, in this paper, we discuss the potentials of the blockchain for resource management and sharing in 6G using multiple application scenarios, namely, Internet of things, device-to-device communications, network slicing, and inter-domain blockchain ecosystems.