A2 Chain: A Blockchain-Based Decentralized Authentication Scheme for 5G-Enabled IoT

The fifth-generation mobile communication technology (5G) provides high-bandwidth and low-latency data channels for massive IoT terminals to access the core business network. At the same time, it also brings higher security threats and challenges. Terminal identity authentication is an important security mechanism to ensure the core business network; however, most of the existing solutions adopt a centralized authentication model. Once the number of authentication requests exceeds the processing capacity of the authentication center service, it will cause authentication request congestion or deadlock. The decentralized authentication model can effectively solve the above problems. This article proposes a decentralized IoT authentication scheme called A(2) Chain. First, A(2) Chain uses edge computing to decentralize the processing of authentication requests and eliminate the burden on authentication services and the network. Second, to implement cross-domain identity verification of IoT devices, A(2) Chain uses blockchain, and sidechain technologies are used to securely share the identity verification information of IoT devices. Additionally, A(2) Chain replaces public key infrastructure (PKI) algorithm with identity-based cryptography (IBC) algorithm to eliminate the management overhead caused by centralized authentication model.