BLOCKCHAIN-SUPPORTED DEVICE LOCATION VERIFICATION WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES

摘要

Location data from one or more geolocation engines such as GPS, a system that determines location from relative signal strengths or transit times, etc., within and/or connected to a device, such as a mobile phone, vehicle, movable electronic device, computer, etc., is included in a digital record that submitted to obtain a digital signature such that the presence of the device at the particular location can later be proven. The digital record may include data that encodes a message, as well as other parameters such as time. The digital signature encodes recomputation parameters of a hash tree signature infrastructure to a highest level value, a function of which is submitted as a transaction in a blockchain.

主权项

1. A method for providing proof of location of a device, the method comprising:
receiving at least one set of signals from at least one transmission system; in a geolocation engine, forming at least one set of location data from corresponding ones of the at least one set of signals; forming an original digital record from parameters that include at least the set(s) of location data; submitting the original digital record as part of a request for digital signature to a hash tree-based, signature infrastructure; receiving from the signature infrastructure a digital signature for the digital record; said signature infrastructure computing a sequence of current highest-level combined output values that are formed as digital combinations of successively lower-level combined output values submitted during corresponding signature-generation periods; said digital signature including recomputation parameters corresponding to sibling values in a recomputation path upward through the hash tree-based, signature infrastructure, such that an arbitrary subsequent test digital record is considered provisionally authenticated relative to the corresponding digital input record if, applying the corresponding digital transformation to the test digital record and, using the recomputation parameters, the same highest-level combined output value is attained as when it was originally computed with the corresponding original digital input; said signature infrastructure further submitting a function of at least one of the highest-level combined output values as a transaction to a blockchain; and associating with each digital signature data identifying which transaction in the blockchain the corresponding original digital record's signature corresponds to, such that the arbitrary subsequent test digital record is considered fully authenticated relative to the corresponding original digital input record if it is both provisionally authenticated and also its corresponding function of the respective calendar value is verified within the blockchain.