An Interactive IoT-Blockchain System for Big Data Management

Abstract

An IoT-blockchain system is proposed to handle big data generated by a distributed network of sensors and controllers in an interactive manner. The system is designed using the Ethereum platform, which utilizes smart contracts, programmed in Solidity, to execute and manage data generated by IoT sensors and devices such as Raspberry Pi 4 and add-on hardware security modules. The proposed system runs a number of applications hosted by a local machine used to validate transactions. It then sends data to the rest of the network through InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Ethereum Swarm, forming a closed IoT ecosystem mastered by blockchain where a number of distributed IoT devices communicate and interact, thus forming a closed controlled environment. A prototype with four IoT handling units distributed over a wide geographical space was deployed to examine its feasibility, performance, and costs. Initial results indicate that big IoT data retrieval, storage is feasible, and interactivity is possible when meeting certain conditions of speed, cost and throughput.