Blockchain-Enabled Device-Enhanced Multi-Access Edge Computing in Open Adversarial Environments

TL;DR

BdMEC addresses trust and security gaps in device-enhanced MEC by integrating blockchain with the Honeybee framework to enable traceable, privacy-preserving offloading across heterogeneous devices. It introduces a dual-layer privacy model (Hyperledger Fabric channels and differential privacy) and a behavioral metric $S_i$ to identify and avoid malicious workers, while aiming for a speed gain $S = time_1/time_2$ with $S>1$. Empirical evaluation on Android devices and a local Hyperledger Fabric setup shows BdMEC achieves substantial speed gains (up to ~48.6% in favorable conditions and ~34.2% when avoiding malicious nodes) but incurs overhead that reduces gains for small tasks. The work contributes a blockchain-enabled MEC mechanism, a practical privacy-preserving strategy, and experimental validation demonstrating viability in open adversarial edge environments.

Abstract

We propose Blockchain-enabled Device-enhanced Multi-access Edge Computing (BdMEC). BdMEC extends the Honeybee framework for on-demand resource pooling with blockchain technology to ensure trust, security, and accountability among devices (even when they are owned by different parties). BdMEC mitigates risks from malicious devices by making computations traceable. Our prototype and results demonstrate BdMEC's ability to manage distributed computing tasks efficiently and securely across multiple devices.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Different tiers involved in device-enhanced MEC.
• Figure 2: Architecture of the proposed blockchain-enabled device-enhanced MEC mechanism (BdMEC).
• Figure 3: Comparison of speed gain between BdMEC and Honeybee without blockchain honeybee over five random executions.
• Figure 4: Comparison of speed gain in malicious settings between BdMEC and Honeybee without blockchainhoneybee.
• Figure 5: Comparison of speed gain between BdMEC and Honeybee without blockchain honeybee over different applications.