A Review on Deploying Blockchain Technology for Network Mobility Management

Abstract

In wireless mobile networks, Mobility Management (MM) is a critical aspect that involves different tasks such as handover management, location management, offloading, resource allocation, and others. Blockchain platform comprising of an array of linked blocks innately supports the incorruptibility, sustaining the authenticity, and sustain pseudonymous privacy. Traditional MM is centralized, in contrast to blockchain-grounded MM that is partially or fully decentralized in its approach. As the inaugural researchers to review on blockchain-grounded MM, we are proud to cluster the blockchain-grounded MM concept under 7 clusters and closely study each framework with respect to different aspects such as blockchain specific parameters, MM specific parameters, network parameters, and more. We gathered a sample of 92 source references by curating the articles for eligibility criteria examined from electronic archives utilizing a comprehensive and enduring way. Grounded on this inspection, blockchain-grounded MM reinforces the overall security, trust, and privacy of location management and resource allocation, blockchain-grounded secure handover, facilitating registration and authentication, automatic MM utilizing smart contracts, reducing vulnerabilities, repairing low quality data, coordination, fair scheduling, in offloading, and blockchain-grounded resource allocation. Close studying proves that out of blockchain grounded MM frameworks, 37.5% utilize blockchain grounded secure handover, 92.5% utilize simple blockchain architecture, 32.5% utilize PoW consensus, 100% distributed MM, 97.5% host grounded MM, 95% packet reordering tolerant MM, 52.5% QoS aware MM, and 12.5% proposed for 5G networks. Finally, we present the openings and obstructions of the concept of blockchain-grounded MM and then catering surmounting advices.