Blockchain-Enhanced Secure RF Link Transmission in Antenna-Constrained Industrial IoT Systems

Abstract

In security and resilience, another vital issue is to maintain the secure and robust RF communication in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) settings in which the use of multiantenna systems is constrained by physical implausibilities. The current paper is a proposal of a
Blockchain-Enhanced Secure RF Link Transmission (BESRFT) scheme targeting antenna-constrained IIoT applications. The framework for those aspects integrates adaptive tuning of the RF parameters with a lightweight blockchain distributed consensus protocol that
restores assuring and even securing communication in event of a cyber-physical assault condition. The proposed structure combines a modified Proof-of-Authentication (PoA) consensus mechanism that scales well and has low overheads to communicate across the IIoT
nodes via an edge and smart contracts are used to authenticate the devices, negotiate the session keys and record intrusions on the fly. To critical hardware constraints, the system dynamically adjusts transmission parameters e.g. frequency, modulation and power
depending on real-time channel metrics e.g. RSSI and SINR resulting in a low degree of information loss and power overhead. The simulation results based on the tool NS-3 and Hyper ledger Besu prove the effectiveness of BESRFT as it provided a spoofing detection
rate of 97.6 percent that lessened packet drop rates by 66 percent or 18.2 to 5.1 percent,  and decreased jamming recovery time by 66 percent or 1.8 seconds to merely 0.6 seconds. Additionally, the validation of prototype approaches that involve TI CC2652R1 and STM32
microcontrollers also confirms that the latency (~1.2 s) and memory overhead (<5%) of blockchain synchronization are minimal, thus confirming that the solution is suitable to be deployed in the resource-constrained IIoT environments. The combined architecture does
not only improve commanding situation but also increases the efficiency of an industrial system like smart grid, oil refineries, and factory automation platforms. The piece instates a decentralized trust system with the RF protection link without requiring the complicated cryptographic infrastructures and centralized control. In the future, the framework has a great potential to be scaled to reconfigurable metasurface-based antenna systems and reconfigurable IIoT architectures with 6G-enabling properties, where the secure, low-latency, and adaptive communication will play a fundamental role