Satellite internet block chain security cross-chain method based on multiple fragments
By introducing a transaction processing mechanism of relay satellite management network in the satellite Internet, the network performance bottlenecks of blockchain technology in the satellite Internet and the competition for satellite-ground link resources are solved, which improves throughput and reduces transaction verification delay.
Patent Information
- Application Number
- CN202410189332.2
- Authority / Receiving Office
- CN · China
- Patent Type
- Applications(China)
- Current Assignee / Owner
- Filing Date
- 2024-02-20
- Publication Date
- 2025-08-22
AI Technical Summary
The direct transplantation of blockchain technology in the existing satellite Internet has network performance bottlenecks and competition for satellite-ground link resources, resulting in transaction failure and increased transaction verification delay.
Transactions in the relay satellite management network are introduced, transactions of service satellites are processed through relay satellites, and data interaction is conducted at the information and control station. Relay satellites are used to store multiple sharded Merkel trees and block header data for transaction verification and aggregation.
It significantly improves the throughput of blockchain in the satellite Internet, reduces resource competition in the satellite-ground links, and shortens transaction verification delay.
Smart Images
Figure CN120528482A_ABST
Abstract
Description
Technical Field
[0001] The present invention relates to a technology in the field of satellite communications, specifically a secure cross-chain method for satellite Internet blockchain based on multi-sharding. Background Art
[0002] Existing satellite internet systems face challenges with communication network security and node access trust, and traditional centralized solutions struggle to fully address these issues. With the continuous development of blockchain technology, many researchers have attempted to combine blockchain and satellite internet, leveraging blockchain's immutable and decentralized nature to address these security and trust issues. However, current satellite internet architectures face the problem that satellites can only establish connections with ground gateways for a small portion of their orbital cycle. Furthermore, gateways have a limited number of antennas, limiting satellite-to-ground link resources. This can lead to transaction failures and transaction verification delays, ultimately resulting in performance issues when directly porting existing blockchain technology to satellite internet. Existing work has not considered both the performance of blockchain networks and communication overhead. Summary of the Invention
[0003] In response to the network performance bottlenecks and increased concurrency pressure on satellite-to-ground links encountered by directly deploying blockchain in existing satellite Internet, this invention proposes a satellite Internet blockchain secure cross-chain method based on multi-sharding. It optimizes the satellite Internet communication networking and introduces transactions in the relay satellite management network, significantly improving the throughput of blockchain deployed in satellite Internet and reducing transaction verification delay, while reducing the concurrency pressure on satellite-to-ground links.
[0004] The present invention is achieved through the following technical solutions:
[0005] The present invention relates to a multi-shard-based satellite internet blockchain secure cross-chain method, comprising:
[0006] Step 1) Initialization: Assign ground-based gateways to different blockchain shards based on their geographic location. Every n gateways form a shard. Each gateway is configured with its own blockchain account and records its identifier and public key on the blockchain to facilitate adding shard consensus nodes. Each gateway runs a full node of the blockchain and jointly maintains its own shard data.
[0007] Step 2) Relay satellite configuration phase: The control center calculates the satellite position based on the ephemeris and satellite orbit, and configures one relay satellite for each group of satellites on the same orbital plane. The relay satellite stores the block header data and Merkle tree of up to n shards, and exchanges data when passing through the gateway station corresponding to its own shard.
[0008] The number of satellites in each group is determined by different applications. The number of ground gateways takes different values according to the number of satellites in the constellation.
[0009] The data interaction includes: sending the latest generated transaction to the gateway and / or synchronizing the block header data in the latest blockchain and receiving transaction receipts.
[0010] Step 3) During the operational phase: the business satellite generates transaction data and transmits it to the relay satellite. The relay satellite classifies and aggregates the transaction data, and transmits the corresponding transaction packets to the gateway station when passing through the gateway station. The gateway station then provides a corresponding transaction receipt.
[0011] The classification refers to: the relay satellite analyzes the fields in the transaction data, identifies the source fragments and the target fragments in the transaction data, and classifies the transactions according to the target fragments.
[0012] Aggregation is triggered by a relay satellite when any of the following conditions are met: when the received transaction data reaches the maximum capacity of a transaction packet, or when the relay satellite passes over a target shard gateway. When the transaction data reaches the maximum capacity of a transaction packet, the relay satellite forwards the transaction packet to other relay satellites via intersatellite links until it reaches the ground station. When the relay satellite passes over the target shard gateway, it establishes a direct connection with the ground network and transmits the transaction packet to the gateway.
[0013] Transmitting the corresponding transaction packet means that when the relay satellite passes by a gateway, it reads the fragment sequence number of the gateway. If the sequence number corresponds to the target fragment, the relay satellite transmits the transaction packet to the gateway. Technical Effects
[0014] This invention manages transactions in the satellite network through relay satellites, processes transactions from service satellites, and forwards transaction receipts from gateways. The relay satellites store Merkle trees and block header data for multiple shards. Compared to existing technologies, this invention enhances the scalability of blockchains in satellite internet scenarios and effectively mitigates resource competition between satellites and the ground. The Merkle trees and block header data stored in the relay satellites can be used for transaction verification, thereby reducing transaction verification latency. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0015] Figure 1 Schematic diagram of the system of the present invention;
[0016] Figure 2 is a flow chart of an embodiment;
[0017] Figure 3 This is the throughput test result chart. The test objects include PoS blockchain, PoS sharded blockchain and the solution in this patent.
[0018] Figure 4 This is a diagram of the transaction verification delay test results. Based on the solution of this patent, two situations are tested: using relay satellites and not using relay satellites. DETAILED DESCRIPTION
[0019] like Figure 1 As shown, this embodiment relates to a multi-shard-based satellite blockchain secure cross-chain system, including: at least one control center located on the ground, a gateway station that runs the ground blockchain and receives satellite signals, a business satellite that transmits transaction data, and a relay satellite that verifies and collects transactions. Among them: the control center manages all devices in the system and initializes the blockchain; the gateway station stores the data of the single shard, distributed by geographical location to ensure that the shards are evenly distributed throughout the entire area; the relay satellite receives transactions from the business satellite, verifies and aggregates them, and after establishing communication with the gateway station, transmits the transaction package to the gateway station, that is, submits the transaction package to the blockchain; if the number of transactions received by the relay satellite reaches the maximum before establishing a connection with the gateway station, the aggregated transactions will be sent to other relay satellites via the intersatellite link; the business satellite, as a light node in the blockchain network, does not store all the data of the blockchain and only transmits transactions to the relay satellite instead of directly to the ground gateway station, thereby avoiding the gateway station from receiving a large number of concurrent transactions and reducing the probability of transaction failure; the relay satellite stores the blockchain block headers and Merkle tree data of several shards of the blockchain, collects transactions sent by the business satellite through the intersatellite link, and sends the aggregated transactions to the gateway station via the satellite-to-ground link when passing through the communication range above the ground gateway station.
[0020] The control center, each gateway station and each satellite are equipped with a blockchain node account, that is, a public-private key pair (PK, SK) as the device's identity identifier.
[0021] For every p satellites, one is designated as a relay satellite. The value of p varies depending on the constellation size and application. A greater number of relay satellites allows for more space to store the data required for transaction verification, reducing transaction verification latency. However, this can lead to resource contention on the satellite-to-ground link. Conversely, a smaller number of relay satellites reduces resource contention on the satellite-to-ground link, but increases transaction verification latency. Therefore, it is important to select an appropriate value for p.
[0022] When processing large amounts of satellite data, the gateway may encounter competition for satellite-to-ground link resources. When the data transmission volume exceeds the link capacity, some transactions may be put in a waiting state.
[0023] The block header and Merkle tree are used by the service satellite to verify whether the transaction has been added to the blockchain. The service satellite sends the transaction hash value to the relay satellite. The relay satellite finds the corresponding Merkle proof in the Merkle tree based on the hash value and returns the Merkle proof to the service satellite. Based on this proof, the service satellite determines whether the transaction has been successfully added to the blockchain.
[0024] like Figure 2 As shown, this embodiment involves a satellite Internet blockchain cross-chain method based on multiple shards, which collects data transactions and / or verifies data transactions in a loop after initializing the blockchain network.
[0025] The initialization of the blockchain network specifically includes:
[0026] 1.1) The control center records its public key information in the genesis block file to initialize the blockchain network;
[0027] 1.2) The control center creates a blockchain account for the gateway station and assigns it a shard number, which is then recorded on the blockchain. After receiving the shard number, the gateway station communicates with other gateway stations with the same shard number to form a shard network and synchronize blockchain data. Due to the small number of gateway stations, a shard allocation scheme based on geographic location is adopted to ensure that shards are evenly distributed across regions.
[0028] 1.3) Initialization of relay satellites: Relay satellites randomly generate blockchain accounts and save block header data and Merkle trees of up to n shards. By using the anti-collision and hashing properties of hash operations, the node address is hashed and the result is modulo the number of shards in the system to determine the shard that the node needs to store. Specifically, each relay satellite has a blockchain address, i.e., its public key PK; an m-bit hash function H is used. m (.) Calculate an m-bit hash value T pub =H m (PK); T pub Divide into n equal parts, and get a set {g1,g2,…,g n}; Perform a modular operation with a divisor of N on the elements in the set to obtain the fragment sequence number set {S1, S2, ..., S n Where N represents the number of shards. The number of bits m and the number of equal fractions n in the hash function should be determined based on the number of satellites in the constellation.
[0029] 1.4) Initialization of the business satellite, the business satellite randomly generates a blockchain account. The node sharding mechanism is similar to that of the relay satellite, except that the business satellite performs H for PK. m Hash operation, the result of the modulo N operation is used to determine the own shard.
[0030] The data collection transaction described above involves a business satellite generating perception and operational status data, embedding this data into a transaction, and transmitting the resulting transaction to multiple nearby relay satellites with the same shards. These relay satellites split the transaction, generate transaction packets based on the transaction shard sequence number, and send them to the ground gateway. Upon receiving the transaction packets, the ground gateway parses them, processes the transaction, aggregates the transaction receipt, and returns the transaction receipt packet to the relay satellite. Upon receiving the transaction results, the relay satellite parses the transaction receipt and returns it to the corresponding satellite.
[0031] The aggregation means: merging transactions with the same sequence number, specifically: when a relay satellite receives a group of transactions with the same fragment sequence number {T1, T2, ..., T k}, the serialized data of the aggregated transaction is L1T1L2T2…L k T k , where: T i It represents a serialized transaction, L i Indicates T i The data length of each L i The number of bits is consistent, which depends on the data size of the transaction.
[0032] The analysis mentioned above means that the gateway re-decomposes the transactions aggregated by the relay satellite into separate transactions. The decomposition process is a reverse operation, specifically: according to L i The number of digits occupied is read L i After the value of i The number of bits of data, that is, T i , and then perform deserialization operations according to the serialization protocol adopted by the blockchain.
[0033] Each transaction in the transaction package includes: the source shard serial number, the target shard serial number, the source shard blockchain block number (i.e., timestamp), the data structure for verification, the transaction content encoding, the version number, and other custom content, wherein: the data structure for verification includes the transaction hash, the Merkle tree path, the Merkle tree proof, and the business satellite node signature.
[0034] When a transaction packet for any shard reaches a preset number of transactions, or when a relay satellite enters the communication range of a ground gateway corresponding to the shard in the transaction packet, the relay satellite will send the transaction packet to the ground gateway. The communication range is determined by the satellite network operator by adjusting the elevation angle of the ground gateway.
[0035] The split transaction means that the relay satellite will receive the cross-shard transaction for pre-processing, and decompose the transaction into transactions related to the source shard and the target shard, where: ① When the source shard sequence number is the same as the target shard sequence number, it indicates that the transaction does not involve multiple shards, and its sub-transaction is the transaction itself; ② When the source shard sequence number is different from the target shard sequence number: Take a data cross-chain transaction as an example, when there are n e1 and n e2 Two light nodes and their data asset status in the blockchain are stored in Shard A and Shard B respectively. e1 Generate a data asset transfer transaction to transfer data asset x to n e2 The transaction is split into two sub-transactions: Sub-transaction 1 transfers n e1 The account of the sub-transaction deducts the data asset x; Sub-transaction 2 converts n e2 The account of adds data asset x. The target shard number of sub-transaction 1 is shard A, and it is included in the transaction package with target shard number A. Similarly, sub-transaction 2 is included in the transaction package with shard number B.
[0036] The verification data transaction refers to: the business satellite uses the relay satellite to verify whether the transaction is on the chain, that is, the business satellite sends the hash value of the transaction to the relay satellite, and the relay satellite returns the corresponding Merkle proof and block header data to verify whether the transaction has been on the chain.
[0037] The Merkle proof means that any shard A calculates its hash value T=H(d) based on the transaction data d, where H(x) is a hash function; the service satellite T receives the data from the relay satellite R. B Get the Merkle root R and Merkle path P = [P1, P2, ..., P n ], business satellites T and P1 are sibling nodes, the hash values of T and P1 are merged, and the hash function is applied to obtain a new hash value T2 = HASH (T|| P1), which is the parent node of T and P1. According to the above consensus, T2 and P2 are applied to calculate a new parent node. According to this process, the final hash value is calculated using the Merkle path P and compared with the Merkle root R. When they are equal, it means that the transaction provided by B is an on-chain transaction, where: there are n nodes in the Merkle path, P1 is a leaf node, P n A child node of the root node.
[0038] Through specific practical experiments, SimBlock was used to construct a satellite network and simulate a blockchain. Network parameters included 1,000 satellites, with one relay satellite among every five. The number of ground gateways (i.e., blockchain consensus nodes) varied from 5 to 50, in increments of 5. A Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain and a blockchain using PoS and sharding were selected for comparison. The method used in this patent introduced relay satellites, employed sharding technology, and used PoS as the consensus mechanism to ensure consistent test conditions. The network throughput and transaction verification latency were tested. The experimental data that can be obtained is: after using sharding technology, the number of blockchain consensus nodes increased from 5 to 50, and an increase in throughput was observed; the use of relay satellites reduced competition in the satellite-to-ground link and aggregated transactions, thereby improving throughput; specific throughput data, the maximum throughput of the blockchain using PoS is 36.47 transactions per second, using sharding technology and PoS, the throughput is 154.97 transactions per second, and introducing relay satellites, using sharding technology and PoS as the consensus mechanism, the throughput is 1549.67 transactions per second. Throughput data is as follows Figure 3 Compared with the PoS blockchain, this technology increases throughput by 45 times. Based on the above experimental settings, the present invention compares the cases with and without relay satellites, and uses SimBlock to simulate the topology of the satellite network to obtain the delay results. Without the use of relay satellites, the average transaction verification delay is 29202.056 milliseconds; while with the use of relay satellites, the average transaction verification delay is 99.645 milliseconds, which is 292 times shorter. The experimental data of transaction delay is shown in Figure 4 shown.
[0039] The above-mentioned specific implementation can be partially adjusted in different ways by those skilled in the art without departing from the principles and purpose of the present invention. The scope of protection of the present invention shall be based on the claims and shall not be limited by the above-mentioned specific implementation. All implementation schemes within its scope shall be subject to the constraints of the present invention.
Claims
1. A satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology, characterized in that: include: Step 1) Initialization: Assign ground-based gateways to different blockchain shards based on their geographic location. Every n gateways form a shard. Each gateway configures its own blockchain account and records its identifier and public key on the blockchain to facilitate adding shard consensus nodes. Each gateway runs a full node of the blockchain and jointly maintains its own shard data. Step 2) Relay satellite configuration phase: The control center calculates the satellite position based on the ephemeris and satellite orbit, and configures one relay satellite for each group of satellites on the same orbital plane. The relay satellite stores the block header data and Merkle tree of up to n shards, and exchanges data when passing through the gateway station corresponding to its own shard; Step 3) During the operational phase: the service satellite generates transaction data and transmits it to the relay satellite. The relay satellite classifies and aggregates the transaction data and transmits the corresponding transaction packet to the gateway station when passing through the gateway station. The gateway station then provides a corresponding transaction receipt. Each transaction in the transaction package includes: the source shard serial number, the target shard serial number, the source shard blockchain block number (i.e., timestamp), a data structure for verification, a transaction content encoding, a version number, and other custom content, wherein the data structure for verification includes a transaction hash, a Merkle tree path, a Merkle tree proof, and a business satellite node signature; When the number of transactions in the transaction package of any shard reaches a preset number, or when the relay satellite enters the communication range of the ground gateway station corresponding to the shard in the transaction package, the relay satellite will send the transaction package to the ground gateway station. The communication range is determined by the satellite network operator by adjusting the elevation angle of the ground gateway station.
2. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claim 1 is characterized in that: The data interaction includes: sending the latest generated transaction to the gateway and / or synchronizing the block header data in the latest blockchain and receiving transaction receipts.
3. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claim 1 is characterized in that: The classification refers to: the relay satellite analyzes the fields in the transaction data, identifies the source shards and the target shards in the transaction data, and classifies the transactions according to the target shards; The analysis mentioned above means that the gateway re-decomposes the transactions aggregated by the relay satellite into separate transactions. The decomposition process is a reverse operation, specifically: according to L i The number of digits occupied is read L i After the value of i The number of bits of data, that is, T i , and then perform deserialization operations according to the serialization protocol adopted by the blockchain.
4. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claim 1 is characterized in that: The aggregation mentioned above means that the relay satellite triggers the aggregation operation when any of the following conditions is met: when the received transaction data reaches the maximum capacity of the transaction package, or when the relay satellite passes through the target shard gateway station, when the transaction data reaches the maximum capacity of the transaction package, the relay satellite will forward the transaction package to other relay satellites through the inter-satellite link until it reaches the ground station. When the relay satellite passes through the target shard gateway station and directly establishes a connection with the ground network, it will transmit the transaction package to the gateway station.
5. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claim 1 is characterized in that: The said transmission of the corresponding transaction package means that when the relay satellite passes through the gateway station, it will read the fragment sequence number of the gateway station. If the sequence number corresponds to the target fragment, the relay satellite will transmit the transaction package to the gateway point.
6. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claims 1-5 is characterized in that: The initialization of the blockchain network specifically includes: 1.1) The control center records its public key information in the genesis block file to initialize the blockchain network; 1.2) The control center creates a blockchain account for the gateway station and assigns it a shard number, which is then recorded on the blockchain. After receiving the shard number, the gateway station communicates with other gateway stations with the same shard number to form a shard network and synchronize blockchain data. Due to the small number of gateway stations, a shard allocation scheme based on geographic location is used to ensure that shards are evenly distributed across regions. 1.3) Initialization of relay satellites: Relay satellites randomly generate blockchain accounts and save block header data and Merkle trees of up to n shards. By using the anti-collision and hashing properties of hash operations, the node address is hashed and the result is modulo the number of shards in the system to determine the shard that the node needs to store. Specifically, each relay satellite has a blockchain address, i.e., its public key PK; an m-bit hash function H is used. m (.) Calculate an m-bit hash value T pub =H m (PK); T pub Divide into n equal parts, and get a set {g1,g2,…,g n }; Perform a modular operation with a divisor of N on the elements in the set to obtain the fragment sequence number set {S1, S2, ..., S n }; where N represents the number of shards; the value of the hash function's bit number m and the equal fraction n should be determined according to the number of satellites in the constellation; 1.4) Initialization of the business satellite, the business satellite randomly generates a blockchain account; the node sharding mechanism is similar to that of the relay satellite, the difference is that the business satellite performs H for PK m Hash operation, the result of the modulo N operation is used to determine the own shard.
7. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claims 1-5 is characterized in that: The data collection transaction refers to: the business satellite generates perception data and operating status data, embeds the data into the transaction, and sends the generated transaction to multiple nearby relay satellites with the same shards. These relay satellites split the transaction, generate transaction packets according to the transaction shard sequence number, and send them to the ground signal gateway station. After receiving the transaction packet, the ground signal gateway station parses the transaction packet, processes the transaction, aggregates the transaction receipt, and returns the transaction receipt packet to the relay satellite; after receiving the transaction result, the relay satellite parses the transaction receipt and returns it to the corresponding satellite.
8. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claim 7 is characterized in that: The split transaction means that the relay satellite will receive the cross-shard transaction for pre-processing, and decompose the transaction into transactions related to the source shard and the target shard, where: ① When the source shard sequence number is the same as the target shard sequence number, it indicates that the transaction does not involve multiple shards, and its sub-transaction is the transaction itself; ② When the source shard sequence number is different from the target shard sequence number: Take a data cross-chain transaction as an example, when there are n e1 and n e2 Two light nodes and their data asset status in the blockchain are stored in shard A and shard B respectively, n e1 Generate a data asset transfer transaction to transfer data asset x to n e2 , the transaction is split into two sub-transactions: Sub-transaction 1 transfers n e1 The account of the sub-transaction deducts the data asset x; Sub-transaction 2 converts n e2 The account of adds data asset x. The target shard number of sub-transaction 1 is shard A, and it is included in the transaction package with target shard number A. Similarly, sub-transaction 2 is classified into the transaction package with shard number B.
9. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claims 1-5 is characterized in that: The verification data transaction refers to: the business satellite uses the relay satellite to verify whether the transaction is on the chain, that is, the business satellite sends the hash value of the transaction to the relay satellite, and the relay satellite returns the corresponding Merkle proof and block header data to verify whether the transaction has been on the chain.
10. The satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology according to claim 9 is characterized in that: The Merkle proof means that any shard A calculates its hash value T=H(d) based on the transaction data d, where H(x) is a hash function; the service satellite T receives the data from the relay satellite R. B Get the Merkle root R and Merkle path P = [P1, P2, ..., P n ], business satellites T and P1 are brother nodes, the hash values of T and P1 are merged, and the hash function is applied to obtain a new hash value T2 = HASH (T || P1), which is the parent node of T and P1, and a new parent node is calculated by applying T2 and P2 according to the above consensus. According to this process, the final hash value is calculated using the Merkle path P and compared with the Merkle root R. When they are equal, it means that the transaction provided by B is an on-chain transaction, where: there are n nodes in the Merkle path, P1 is a leaf node, P n A child node of the root node.
11. A system for implementing the satellite blockchain secure cross-chain networking method based on multi-sharding technology as described in any one of claims 1-10, characterized in that: include: At least one ground-based control center, a gateway station that runs the ground blockchain and receives satellite signals, a business satellite that transmits transaction data, and a relay satellite that verifies and collects transactions, wherein: the control center manages all devices in the system and initializes the blockchain; The gateway station stores the data of a single shard and distributes it by geographical location to ensure that the shards are evenly distributed throughout the entire region; the relay satellite receives transactions from the business satellite, verifies and aggregates them, and after establishing communication with the gateway station, transmits the transaction package to the gateway station, that is, submits the transaction package to the blockchain; if the number of transactions received by the relay satellite reaches the maximum before establishing a connection with the gateway station, the aggregated transactions will be sent to other relay satellites via intersatellite links; the business satellite, as a light node in the blockchain network, does not store all the data of the blockchain and only transmits transactions to the relay satellite instead of directly to the ground gateway station, thereby avoiding the gateway station from receiving a large number of concurrent transactions and reducing the probability of transaction failure; the relay satellite stores the blockchain block headers and Merkle tree data of several shards of the blockchain, collects transactions sent by the business satellite through the intersatellite link, and sends the aggregated transactions to the gateway station via the satellite-to-ground link when passing through the communication range above the ground gateway station.