Towards a Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Quality of Experience System

• Grant number: 24/19769-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Principal Investigator: Jó Ueyama
• Grantee: Rodrigo Dutra Garcia
• Supervisor: Bhaskar Krishnamachari
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Southern California (USC), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/15919-1 - Toward 6G Network Security and Privacy Employing Blockchain-Based Governance Mechanisms, BP.DR

Abstract

The development of Beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G networks will present significant challenges in ensuring data privacy and maintaining a high Quality of Experience (QoE) for users. While essential for decision-making, centralized machine learning models pose security risks due to the need to process sensitive data on central servers. Additionally, these models lack transparency, making it difficult for users to understand the experiences of others and for service providers to understand overall QoE and network conditions. This lack of transparency can undermine trust and impede efforts to enhance service quality. This research proposes a decentralized, blockchain-based system that enables users to actively contribute to improving the QoE system while protecting sensitive data within a publicly transparent infrastructure. Additionally, this research will explore decentralized learning approaches for training machine learning models on distributed QoE data, ensuring user privacy is maintained throughout the process.