Securing Space Cognitive Communication with Blockchain

Cognitive communication helps track active and inactive resident space objects, which is part of Space Situation Awareness (SSA). Gathering and analyzing SSA sensor data helps evaluate the space environment, which maintains and enhances Space Traffic Management (STM) coordination and accommodation. Securing cognitive communication is required to protect the accuracy of transmitted data and provide authorized entities access privileges to data and services. It is difficult to create a reliable centralized Identity authentication and access control (AC) system because of the decentralization and heterogeneity of space systems, which can either be a performance bottleneck or a single point of failure. Blockchain technology holds enormous potential for securing cognitive communication-based space networks. We introduce blockchain-enabled, capability-based access control, decentralized authentication, and an automatic vulnerability correction algorithm to help smart contract administrators patch problems and enable efficient protection for devices, services, and information in space networks. A proof-of-concept prototype will be developed and tested on an Ethereum version 2 which uses proof of stake (PoS) blockchain network using both resource-constrained devices (such as Raspberry Pi nodes simulating as satellites with sensor observations) and more powerful computing devices (such as laptops simulating as ground network). The experimentation will be evaluated with computation overhead, latency, anomaly detection contract, and processing overhead. The outcomes of the experiments will demonstrate our objective to provide a decentralized, scalable, lightweight, and fine-grained blockchain solution for securing space communication networks.