Integrating Blockchain and Internet of Things for Smart Homes

Abstract

One of the most popular applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) is smart home which consists of several IoT devices for collecting data and controlling home appliances. Since IoT devices communicate with external entities for service provision smart homes are vulnerable to security threats. Blockchain is a public distributed ledger which is immutable and can securely store data. One solution for security issues with smart homes can be integrating blockchain and smart homes. This paper proposes a new framework for integrating blockchain and smart home in which a smart contract controls the interaction among IoT devices with external entities. Smart contract of a home is associated with the public key of the householder and can have several subcontracts. Subcontracts are used to govern the interaction between one or more IoT devices and one or more external entities. The successful results of the first prototype of the proposed framework show its potential to appropriately address the security and data privacy issues with smart homes.