Blockchain-enabled Chebyshev polynomial-based group authentication for secure communication in an Internet of Things network

The utilization of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in various smart city and industrial applications is growing rapidly. Within a trusted authority (TA), such as an industry or smart city, all IoT devices are closely monitored in a controlled infrastructure. However, in cases where an IoT device from one TA needs to communicate with another IoT device from a different TA, the trust establishment between these devices becomes extremely important. Obtaining a digital certificate from a certificate authority for each IoT device can be expensive. To solve this issue, a group authentication framework is proposed that can establish trust between group IoT devices owned by different entities. The Chebyshev polynomial has many important properties, semigroup is one of the most important. These properties make the Chebyshev polynomial a good candidate for the proposed group authentication mechanism. The secure exchange of information between trusted authorities is supported by Blockchain technology. The proposed framework was implemented and tested using Python and deployed on Blockchain using Ethereum’s Goerli’s testnet. The results show that the proposed framework can reasonably use Chebyshev polynomials with degrees up to four digits in length. The values of various parameters related to Blockchain are also discussed to understand the usability of the proposed framework.