Edge-engineered Post-Quantum Trust Architecture with Self-Sovereign Identity and Zero-Knowledge Verification for Secure, Scalable, and Resource-Efficient 6G OpenRAN Systems

Securing decentralized identity and control in 6G OpenRAN requires a framework that preserves protocol integrity under heterogeneous trust domains, variable edge resources, and adversarial traffic. This study presents a hybrid post-quantum trust architecture that combines a permissioned blockchain, Self-Sovereign Identity, Learning-With-Errors encryption, ML-DSA signatures, and classically secure non-interactive zero-knowledge verification over Ristretto255. The Proof-of-Edge Participation mechanism selects validator committees using authenticated measurements of compute throughput, memory availability, link bandwidth, node availability, and protocol reliability. A deep Q-network performs load-aware task allocation over srsRAN-derived RAN behavior represented within NS-3. Across the evaluated conditions, the framework achieved an overall authentication success rate of 98.3%, a normal-condition authentication latency of 3.91 ms, and a mean latency of 5.33 ms across L1–L8. Mean consensus delay was 105.5 ms. Mean entropy-based privacy leakage was 0.0188, with scenario values ranging from 0.013 to 0.026. Throughput retention was 91.4% under the 10,000-node SC8 condition. Comparative evaluation against DZTF, QIDM, PQDID, BDRM, SDDTV, MDNS, and DROA identified consistent improvements in authentication reliability, latency, consensus delay, throughput retention, and privacy leakage. The physical evaluation further confirmed operation within the processing, memory, power, and thermal limits of the tested Raspberry Pi 4B platform.