The Convergence of Blockchain, IoT and 6G: Potential, Opportunities, Challenges and Research Roadmap

The world is undergoing a profound transformation with the advent of intelligent information era. 6G networks envisioned being the game changer in next generation wireless communication systems that will address the challenges of limited information speed escalated with the augmentation of billions of data applications encountered by the current fifth generation (5G) networks. Some key radical technologies in 6G together with existing 5G candidate schemes will guarantee the expected quality of experience (QoE) to attain ubiquitous wireless connectivity for the Internet of Everything (IoE) ranging from the telecom industry to digital smart industries. Blockchain technology (BCT) has gained significant attention due to undertake the decentralization, transparency, spectrum resource scarcity, inherent privacy and security, poor interoperability, confidentiality, and emerging smart applications domains including Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0. The mismatch between the requirements of many data intensive disruptive IoT applications and 5G network capabilities steered the demand of decentralized BCT based 6G architecture. Inspired by these facts, this paper studies an extensive survey to draw a new direction of blockchain integration into 6G mobile networks, IoT technologies, and smart industries focusing the potential merits and challenges in terms of infrastructure sharing, computational loads, latency, bandwidth overhead, business model, sustainability goals, and edge intelligence. We highlighted the convergence of IoT in blockchain to enable intelligent distribution in future industrial IoT and the technical model of 6G networks to realize the successful deployment of BCT schemes. This paper pointed out the current intriguing challenges, canvassed the mitigation techniques, and plausible future research opportunities that may benefit the pursuit of this vision.