Radio Access Networks (RAN) tends to be more distributed in the 5G and beyond, in order to provide low latency and flexible on-demanding services. In this paper, Blockchain-enabled Radio Access Networks (BE-RAN) is proposed as a novel decentralized RAN architecture to facilitate enhanced security and privacy on identification and authentication. It can offer user-centric identity management for User Equipment (UE) and RAN elements, and enable mutual authentication to all entities while enabling on-demand point-to-point communication with accountable billing service add-on on public network. Also, a potential operating model with thorough decentralization of RAN is envisioned. The paper also proposed a distributed privacy-preserving P2P communication approach, as one of the core use cases for future mobile networks, is presented as an essential complement to the existing core network-based security and privacy management. The results show that BE-RAN significantly improves communication and computation overheads compared to the existing communication authentication protocols.

翻译：无线电接入网络(RAN)往往在5G及以后的分布更加广泛,以便提供低延迟和灵活的点对点服务,提供有需求服务的灵活服务;本文提议, " 链链式无线电接入网络(BE-RAN) " 是一个新的分散式RAN架构,以促进在识别和认证方面加强安全和隐私;它可以为用户设备(UE)和RAN元素提供以用户为中心的身份管理,使所有实体能够相互认证,同时能够按需进行点对点通信,在公共网络上提供负责的收费服务附加;此外,还设想了一种潜在的操作模式,彻底下放RAN的分权;该文件还提议采用分散式的隐私保护P2P通信方法,作为未来移动网络的核心使用案例之一,作为现有基于网络的安全和隐私管理核心的补充;结果显示,BE-RAN与现有通信认证协议相比,大大改进通信和计算间接费用。