Analysis of Channel Uncertainty in Trusted Wireless Services via Repeated Interactions

TL;DR

The paper tackles trust-building for secure wireless services in open 6G by modeling SP-client interactions as a repeated game under channel fading. It derives cooperation conditions that couple objective channel quality $d$ with subjective cooperation willingness $w$, and shows how to optimize system parameters $(p,\tau)$ to sustain long-term cooperation even in adverse channels. A key contribution is the cooperation-area framework, which quantifies robustness by partitioning the $d$–$w$ plane into cases and demonstrating that balanced trust (Case IV) yields the largest region of feasible cooperation. The work also reveals explicit trade-offs among transmission efficiency, service integrity, and cooperation margin, and validates results with fading-channel simulations. The proposed joint optimization and cooperation-region notions provide practical design guidance for perimeterless, zero-trust wireless services in next-generation networks.

Abstract

The coexistence of heterogeneous sub-networks in 6G poses new security and trust concerns and thus calls for a perimeterless-security model. Blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) provides a trust-building approach via repeated interactions rather than relying on pre-established trust or central authentication. Such a trust-building process naturally supports dynamic trusted services across various service providers (SP) without the need for perimeter-based authentications; however, it remains vulnerable to environmental and system unreliability such as wireless channel uncertainty. In this study, we investigate channel unreliability in the trust-building framework based on repeated interactions for secure wireless services. We derive specific requirements for achieving cooperation between SPs and clients via a repeated game model and illustrate the implications of channel unreliability on sustaining trusted wireless services. We consider the framework design and optimization to guarantee SP-client cooperation, given the worst channel condition and/or the least cooperation willingness. Furthermore, we explore the maximum cooperation area to enhance service resilience and reveal the trade-off relationship between transmission efficiency, security integrity, and cooperative margin. Finally, we present simulations to demonstrate the system performance over fading channels and verify our results.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Workflow of trusted wireless access services via repeated interactions.
• Figure 2: Game tree for a stage game in repeated interactions.
• Figure 3: Minimum requirement on the cooperation willingness $w$, with $\Gamma\left(d\right)=\Gamma\left(0\right)\exp\left(-\varphi d\right)$ and $\varphi=2$, for $d^{\text{max}}=0.15$.
• Figure 4: Minimum requirement on the channel outage probability $d$, with $\Gamma\left(d\right)=\Gamma\left(0\right)\exp\left(-\varphi d\right)$ and $\varphi=2$, for $w^{\text{min}}=0.8$.
• Figure 5: Joint optimization for channel outage probability $d$ and cooperation willingness $w$, with $\Gamma\left(d\right)=\Gamma\left(0\right)\exp\left(-\varphi d\right)$ and $\varphi=2$ for $d^{\text{max}}=0.25$ and $w^{\text{min}}=0.5$.

Theorems & Definitions (23)

• Definition 1
• Theorem 1
• proof
• Corollary 1
• proof
• Corollary 2
• proof
• Corollary 3
• proof
• Corollary 4