EO-ZT : Economically Informed Zero-Trust for Secure Spectrum Trading in Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN)

Zheng, Guhan and Ni, Qiang and Yu, Wenjuan (2025) EO-ZT : Economically Informed Zero-Trust for Secure Spectrum Trading in Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN). Computer Networks: 111846. ISSN 1389-1286 (In Press)

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Abstract

The adoption of Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) in 6G O-RAN spectrum trading introduces additional energy overhead from continuous authentication and encryption, along with economic-security challenges such as moral hazard and reduced security investment. To address these challenges, we propose the EO-ZT framework, a novel ZTA tailored for the O-RAN. Our framework includes a novel deposit-refund system (DRS)-based trust evaluation component and adaptive policy components designed for O-RAN spectrum trading. The DRS-based trust evaluation component aims to suppress moral hazard, drawing inspiration from the sharing economy. Within the adaptive policy component, security, energy, zero-trust policy and spectrum trading policy are jointly formulated as coupled decision-making problems. Hence, we propose a game-theoretical spectrum trading scheme (GSTS) to enable fair spectrum trading between subscribers and cell sites, mitigating moral hazard and incentivizing dynamic security investment by RAN intelligent controllers (RICs). Building on this, the presented spectrum market competition scheme (SMCS), based on a winner-take-all model, employs cell zooming strategies to reduce energy consumption while promoting security investment among cell sites. Simulations demonstrate the superiority of EO-ZT over existing potential application algorithms for ZTA in O-RAN, effectively balancing energy efficiency, economic viability, and security requirements in spectrum trading markets.