Modeling Blockchain-Based Wireless Access: A Queuing Perspective

Abstract

Blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) offers a promising solution for trustworthy wireless applications by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts. However, the existing literature falls short in addressing the corresponding modeling and theoretical analysis. In this study, we develop analytical models to characterize the wireless access process in B-RAN, which also sheds light on other blockchain-enabled services. We first construct a two-dimensional queuing model and identify both blockchain scalability and RAN capability as two system bottlenecks, and then introduce the matrix analytic method to reduce complexity and improve efficiency. Furthermore, we build tandem queuing models for obtaining tight latency bounds with closed-form expressions. The performance and complexity of the proposed models are evaluated and compared against existing benchmarks to provide a comprehensive perspective. Finally, we present experimental results from a lab-built B-RAN prototype to demonstrate the efficacy of our models.