Scalable Blockchain Implementation for Edge-based Internet of Things Platform

Abstract

State-of-the-art centralized internet of things (IoT) architectures suffer from scalability issues in terms of both devices and transactions. Centralized architecture infers a central server with finite resources to process the communication demands of large IoT networks. The security of such IoT infrastructures is contingent on the protection of the central server. To address the challenges of security and scalability of transactions, we design and implement an edge-based blockchain network, where a set of edge nodes are incorporated to serve the requests of field devices. The edge nodes of our network offer security and processing functionalities to data transactions made by field devices. Besides the proposed architecture, a proof of concept of our edge-based blockchain platform is implemented to study its feasibility and performance. The platform achieves the fundamental security properties and addresses the transaction scalability issue. Blockchain technology and edge computing have the potential to enable a robust, and flexible architecture for IoT networks while maintaining low latency and high availability. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is evaluated in a simulated network.