StarCross: Redactable blockchain-based secure and lightweight data sharing framework for satellite-based IoT

Abstract

Due to limitations in network coverage and capacity, terrestrial networks cannot meet the growing demand for widespread intelligent applications in recent years. The increasingly popular Satellite-based Internet of Things (S-IoT), with its extensive and boundless coverage, has emerged as the optimal solution. However, the large-scale distributed communication and services have led to significant challenges in scalability and security. Blockchain can help mitigate security and privacy issues in data sharing of S-IoT. To address these challenges, we propose StarCross, a secure and lightweight data sharing framework for S-IoT based on redactable blockchain. Firstly, we develop a space-ground collaborative sharding blockchain network architecture. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network serves as the communication intermediary between shards. Secondly, StarCross employs an improved Proof of Work (PoW) consensus based on dynamic difficulty to mitigate the challenges of uneven computing power and centralization within each shard. To ensure the atomicity of cross-shard transactions, StarCross introduces a blockchain rewriting mechanism called RBCVC, which combines chameleon hash and voting-based consensus. Thirdly, we conducted theoretical analysis and experimental evaluations of StarCross. The results indicate that compared to existing solutions, StarCross achieves better scalability and security in S-IoT. StarCross’s TPS increased to 260.9% of the baseline, while the transaction confirmation latency decreased by 79.7%.