Blockchain-Based Privacy Preservation for 5G-Enabled Drone Communications

Abstract

5G-enabled drones have potential applications in a variety of both military and civilian settings (e.g., monitoring and tracking of individuals in demonstrations and/or enforcing of social/ physical distancing during pandemics such as COVID-19). Such applications generally involve the collection and dissemination of (massive) data from the drones to remote data centers for storage and analysis (e.g., via 5G networks). Consequently, there are security and privacy considerations underpinning 5G-enabled drone communications. We posit the potential of leveraging blockchain to facilitate privacy preservation, and therefore in this article we review existing blockchain-based solutions after introducing the architecture for 5G-enabled drone communications and block-chain. We also review existing legislation and data privacy regulations that need to be considered in the design of blockchain-based solutions, as well as identify potential challenges and open issues that will hopefully inform future research.