Performance Analysis and Comparison of Non-ideal Wireless PBFT and RAFT Consensus Networks in 6G Communications

TL;DR

This study evaluates and compares the performance of non-ideal wireless PBFT and RAFT consensus mechanisms in 6G networks using THz and mmWave signals, considering physical layer impairments and deriving the concept of active distance.

Contribution

It introduces the analysis of PBFT and RAFT performance with high-frequency signals in realistic wireless conditions, including path loss and fading effects, which was previously underexplored.

Findings

Identifies the maximum active distance for successful consensus.

Provides performance metrics for THz and mmWave in non-ideal conditions.

Offers insights into the suitability of PBFT and RAFT for 6G wireless networks.

Abstract

Due to advantages in security and privacy, blockchain is considered a key enabling technology to support 6G communications. Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) and RAFT are seen as the most applicable consensus mechanisms (CMs) in blockchain-enabled wireless networks. However, previous studies on PBFT and RAFT rarely consider the channel performance of the physical layer, such as path loss and channel fading, resulting in research results that are far from real networks. Additionally, 6G communications will widely deploy high-frequency signals such as terahertz (THz) and millimeter wave (mmWave), while performances of PBFT and RAFT are still unknown when these signals are transmitted in wireless PBFT or RAFT networks. Therefore, it is urgent to study the performance of non-ideal wireless PBFT and RAFT networks with THz and mmWave signals, to better make PBFT and RAFT play a role in the 6G era. In this paper, we study and compare the performance of THz and mmWave signals in non-ideal wireless PBFT and RAFT networks, considering Rayleigh Fading (RF) and close-in Free Space (FS) reference distance path loss. Performance is evaluated by five metrics: consensus success rate, latency, throughput, reliability gain, and energy consumption. Meanwhile, we find and derive that there is a maximum distance between two nodes that can make CMs inevitably successful, and it is named the active distance of CMs. The research results analyze the performance of non-ideal wireless PBFT and RAFT networks, and provide important references for the future transmission of THz and mmWave signals in PBFT and RAFT networks.