OrbitalChain: Truth Discovery Mechanisms for Dynamic Data Streams in Inter-Satellite Communication

Real-time data streaming analysis plays an important role in modern applications. Several technologies have been used by researchers to improve data streaming. Among these technologies, satellite communication has been efficient for the task. The use of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks for data streaming, particularly in remote and underserved regions has introduced challenges in ensuring data integrity, trust, and security for inter-satellite communication. Traditional centralized data verification methods are limited due to high latency, limited computational resources, and vulnerability to single points of failure. To address these limitations, this paper presents OrbitalChain, a decentralized data streaming system designed to manage data access control services without relying on intermediate trust entities. The proposed system aims to secure real-time data fusion in LEO satellite networks through a sharded blockchain architecture, thus facilitating multi-source information fusion. Furthermore, we introduce a blockchain-based truth discovery mechanism to prevent the dissemination of false information. This mechanism continuously evaluates the trustworthiness of satellite nodes, using historical data and reliability scores to identify and mitigate the impact of malicious or faulty nodes. The proposed mechanism implemented on shard blockchain, enables consensus on data validity across the distributed satellite network, ensuring only verified information reaches end-users. Additionally, OrbitalChain employs a D-Stream clustering-based truth discovery mechanism to improve data reliability. Moreover, an inter-shard PBFT(Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus protocol ensures efficient cross-shard transactions while mitigating Byzantine faults. During the experiment, we evaluated OrbitalChain over an active blockchain network. Experimental results confirm that OrbitalChain effectively balances scalability, security, better transaction throughput, low latency, and real-time performance, making it an optimal solution for trust management in next-generation LEO satellite networks.