MeshChain: A comprehensive blockchain-based framework for mesh networks

This paper tackles the problem of guaranteed, fair, trusted, and transparent payments to mesh routers to incentivize participation in commercialized mesh networks. Mesh networks are popularly deployed in various domains, including within home and private companies to increase coverage with high throughput and provide security. Extending the mesh networks to commercial use requires the public to actively participate in them. Monetary incentives through cryptocurrency have been discussed in the literature, however, payment management, cost consideration during the selection of mesh routers, and validation of routing actions for fair payment are still open challenges. To tackle the problem of routing validation, other related works are considering monitoring nodes, however, the quality of monitoring decisions is affected by direct communication, mobility direction, and speed. To tackle the mentioned challenges, this paper proposes a comprehensive blockchain-based framework for commercialized mesh networks to incentivize participation. The framework manages the routing requests, routing validation, consensus, and payments on-chain while selecting high-quality, low-cost routers to fulfill the routing requests off-chain. Once a requester raises a routing request, the mesh routers are selected based on quality, reputation, and routing cost. Routing data is stored securely in tamper-proof files, which are shared with a set of trusted validators. The validators submit their decisions and a Proof of Routing (PoR) consensus is achieved on-chain offering transparent routing validation. Accordingly, the payment is calculated and issued based on the performance and contribution of the mesh routers. The presented simulations validate the feasibility of the proposed framework.