wChain: A Fast Fault-Tolerant Blockchain Protocol for Multihop Wireless Networks

02/02/2021

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by   Minghui Xu, et al.

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This paper presents 𝑤𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑛, a blockchain protocol specifically designed for multihop wireless networks that deeply integrates wireless communication properties and blockchain technologies under the realistic SINR model. We adopt a hierarchical spanner as the communication backbone to address medium contention and achieve fast data aggregation within O(log NlogΓ) slots where N is the network size and Γ refers to the ratio of the maximum distance to the minimum distance between any two nodes. Besides, 𝑤𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑛 employs data aggregation and reaggregation, and node recovery mechanisms to ensure efficiency, fault tolerance, persistence, and liveness. The worst-case runtime of 𝑤𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑛 is upper bounded by O(flog NlogΓ), where f=⌊N/2⌋ is the upper bound of the number of faulty nodes. To validate our design, we conduct both theoretical analysis and simulation studies, and the results only demonstrate the nice properties of 𝑤𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑛, but also point to a vast new space for the exploration of blockchain protocols in wireless networks.