Efficient Blockchain Synchronization for Internet of Things using Signature Amortization
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We study the problem of efficiently disseminating authenticated blockchain information from blockchain nodes (servers) to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, through a wireless base station (BS). In existing blockchain protocols, upon generation of a new block, each IoT device receives a copy of the block header, authenticated via digital signature by one or more trusted servers. Since it relies on unicast transmissions, the required communication resources grow linearly with the number of IoT devices. We propose a more efficient scheme, in which a single copy of each block header is multicasted, together with the signatures of servers. In addition, if IoT devices tolerate a delay, we exploit the blockchain structure to amortize the authentication in time, by transmitting only a subset of signature in each block period. Finally, the BS sends redundant information, via a repetition code, to deal with the unreliable wireless channel, with the aim of decreasing the amount of feedback required from IoT devices. Our analysis shows the trade-off between timely authentication of blocks and reliability of the communication, depending on the channel quality (packet loss rate), the block interaction, and the presence of forks in the blockchain. The numerical results show the performance of the scheme, that is a viable starting point to design new blockchain lightweight protocols.
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