Privacy-preserving authentication for 5G healthcare with HBZKP: Hierarchical blockchain-based zero knowledge proof for secure edge devices

Objective: The combination of 5G connectivity and edge computing known as 5G Edge, lifts the limitations of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) and enables a plethora of authentic healthcare services, including access to medical information and diagnosis. Additionally, there is a chance that malicious insiders using the 5G Edge platform could compromise the security and confidentiality of IoMT data. As a result, end users cannot trust 5G Edge data. Materials and methods: This paper imagines a new hierarchical blockchain edge of things (HBEoT) architecture that would facilitate healthcare applications managed by blockchain at the network edge. Additionally, the article delves into how HBEoT can offer security services such as authenticating users, protecting data, detecting attacks, and managing trust. First, the consensus method PoS generates a block for healthcare data, and its hash values are kept in the blockchain. The Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) protocol stores secret information in the blockchain, authenticating healthcare systems for enhanced privacy and security. Results: To ensure immutable data storage, the suggested architecture incorporates 5G Edge servers into a blockchain platform. It prevents unauthorised users from accessing healthcare services by acting as an anonymous authenticator. We assessing the proposed methods efficiency in terms of latency, throughput, communication cost, energy consumption cost and the validation between ZKP prover and verifier. Conclusion: We conduct multiple experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the suggested framework. To further investigate the quality measures, such as authenticate latency, throughput rate was examined. To fulfil the requirements for a 5G-enabled healthcare system, the research shows that the suggested HBEoT-ZKP performs a decrease in latency of around 1.16 s and an improvement in throughput of approximately 339 tps. Communication and energy cost is evaluated and compared with other conventional methods.