Introduction

Future communication network is envisioned to be highly heterogeneous with various stakeholders from different trust domains, including mobile operators, technological vendors, etc. As service requirements and user dynamics become more dynamic, artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted network management is a promising approach to increase service satisfaction and reduce operational costs. However, the AI-assisted approach puts stringent demand on data volume and quality, which requires new data security approaches across the trust boundaries of network stakeholders. In this chapter, we first review the features of future heterogeneous communication networks (HCN) to highlight the need of an advanced network architecture with data-driven network management methods. To manage data lifecycle events and preserve data security among heterogeneous network stakeholders, we introduce blockchain-based data management (DM) for HCN. We then present the design challenges in balancing privacy, efficiency, and fairness in DM with the decentralization nature of the blockchain and discuss three representative data security approaches: reliable data provenance, transparent data query, and fair data marketing. Finally, we provide the aim of the monograph and the overview the main contents of the following chapters.