Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.3390/info16030202

Publication Title

Information

Volume

16

Issue

3

Pages

202 (1-16)

Abstract

The consensus algorithm is the core technology of blockchain systems to maintain data consistency, and its performance directly affects the efficiency and security of the whole system. Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) plays a crucial role in blockchain consensus algorithms by providing a robust mechanism to achieve fault-tolerant and deterministic consensus in distributed networks. With the development of 5G network technology, its features of high bandwidth, low latency, and high reliability provide a new approach for consensus algorithm optimization. To take advantage of the features of the 5G network, this paper proposes 5G-PBFT, which is an improved practical Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithm with three ways to improve PBFT. Firstly, 5G-PBFT constructed the reputation model based on node performance and behavior. The model dynamically selected consensus nodes based on the reputation value to ensure the reliability of the consensus node selection. Next, the algorithm selected the primary node using the reputation model and verifiable random function, giving consideration to the reliability of the primary node and the randomness of the selection process. Finally, we take advantage of the low latency feature of the 5G network to omit the submission stage to reduce the communication complexity from ON² to ON, where N denotes the number of nodes. The simulation results show that 5G-PBFT achieves a 26% increase in throughput and a 63.6% reduction in transaction latency compared to the PBFT, demonstrating significant performance improvements.

Rights

© 2025 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Comments

Data availability statement: Article states: "Data are contained within the article."

ORCID

0000-0003-2695-9642 (Zheng)

Original Publication Citation

Liu, X., Fan, X., Niu, B., & Zheng, X. (2025). 5G-Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance: An improved PBFT consensus algorithm for the 5G network. Information, 16(3), 1-16, Article 202. https://doi.org/10.3390/info16030202

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