Mobile edge computing (MEC) and next-generation mobile networks are set to disrupt the way intelligent and autonomous systems are interconnected. This will have an effect on a wide range of domains, from the Internet of Things to autonomous mobile robots. The integration of such a variety of MEC services in a inherently distributed architecture requires a robust system for managing hardware resources, balancing the network load and securing the distributed applications. Blockchain technology has emerged a solution for managing MEC services, with consensus protocols and data integrity checks that enable transparent and efficient distributed decision-making. In addition to transparency, the benefits from a security point of view are evident. Nonetheless, blockchain technology faces significant challenges in terms of scalability. In this chapter, we review existing consensus protocols and scalability techniques in both well-established and next-generation blockchain architectures. From this, we evaluate the most suitable solutions for managing MEC services and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the available alternatives.
Sergey Smetanin, Aleksandr Ometov, Mikhail Komarov, Pavel Mašek · 5 authors
The present increase of attention toward blockchain-based systems is currently reaching a tipping point with the corporate focus shifting from exploring the technology potential to creating Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based systems. In light of a significant number of already existing blockchain applications driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) evolution, the developers are still facing a lack of tools and instruments for appropriate and efficient performance evaluation and behavior observation of different blockchain architectures. This paper aims at providing a systematic review of current blockchain evaluation approaches and at identifying the corresponding utilization challenges and limitations. First, we outline the main metrics related to the blockchain evaluation. Second, we propose the blockchain modeling and analysis classification based on the critical literature review. Third, we extend the review with publicly accessible industrial tools. Next, we analyze the selected results for each of the proposed classes and outline the corresponding limitations. Finally, we identify current challenges of the blockchain analysis from the system evaluation perspective, as well as provide future perspectives.
With the development of technology, the network structure has changed a lot. Many people regard the Internet of Things as the next-generation network structure, which means all the embedded devices can communicate with each other directly. However, some problems remain in IoT before it can be applied in a large scale. Blockchain, which has become a hot research topic in recent years, may be one of the solutions. However, currently, the transaction speed of blockchain is still a disadvantage compared to traditional transaction methods. This paper focuses on to implement a high-performance blockchain platform. After investigation of the current blockchain consensus algorithm and blockchain architecture, we propose: (1) an improved blockchain consensus algorithm, which is implemented based on the mortgage model instead of probability model; (2) a cross-chain protocol with transverse expansion capacity, which would support the message transmission among chains; (3) a high-performance cross-chain blockchain network structure, which could handle more than 1000 transactions per second per chain by verification. Experiments have been carried out, and shown that the cross-chain blockchain network structure we provided is feasible to meet the requirement of large-scale distributed IoT applications.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
With the recent considerable developments in the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of resource-constrained devices are interconnected through the internet. Monitoring this huge number of IoT devices that are heterogeneous in terms of underlying communication protocols and data format is challenging. The majority of existing IoT device monitoring solutions heavily rely on centralized architectures. Since using centralized architectures comes at the expense of trusting an authority, it has several inherent drawbacks, including vulnerability to security attacks, lack of data privacy, and unauthorized data manipulation. Hence, a new decentralized approach is crucial to remedy these drawbacks. One of the most promising technologies which is widely used to provide decentralization is blockchain. Additionally, to ease the burden of communication overhead and computational power on resource-constrained IoT devices, fog computing can be exploited to decrease communication latency and provide better network scalability. In this paper, we propose a scalable blockchain-based architecture for monitoring IoT devices using fog computing. To demonstrate the feasibility and usability of the proposed solution, we have implemented a proof-of-concept prototype, leveraging Ethereum smart contracts. Finally, a comprehensive evaluation is conducted. The evaluation results indicate that the proposed solution is significantly scalable and compatible with resource-constrained IoT devices.
With the recent considerable developments in the Internet of Things (IoT),\nbillions of resource-constrained devices are interconnected through the\ninternet. Monitoring this huge number of IoT devices that are heterogeneous in\nterms of underlying communication protocols and data format is challenging. The\nmajority of existing IoT device monitoring solutions heavily rely on\ncentralized architectures. Since using centralized architectures comes at the\nexpense of trusting an authority, it has several inherent drawbacks, including\nvulnerability to security attacks, lack of data privacy, and unauthorized data\nmanipulation. Hence, a new decentralized approach is crucial to remedy these\ndrawbacks. One of the most promising technologies which is widely used to\nprovide decentralization is blockchain. Additionally, to ease the burden of\ncommunication overhead and computational power on resource-constrained IoT\ndevices, fog computing can be exploited to decrease communication latency and\nprovide better network scalability.\n In this paper, we propose a scalable blockchain-based architecture for\nmonitoring IoT devices using fog computing. To demonstrate the feasibility and\nusability of the proposed solution, we have implemented a proof-of-concept\nprototype, leveraging Ethereum smart contracts. Finally, a comprehensive\nevaluation is conducted. The evaluation results indicate that the proposed\nsolution is significantly scalable and compatible with resource-constrained IoT\ndevices.\n
Industry 4.0 technological expansion and the multiple accesses to the diverse Smart Grid domains (power networks, control systems, market, customer premises) entail the need to provide efficient interconnection mechanisms with connection from anywhere, at any time and in anyhow. However, this type of requirement should not only consist in imposing interoperability solutions between entities and domains, but also in searching the way to justify and trace connections (how, when, where, who) for future governance or auditing actions. This paper, therefore, presents a three layer-based interconnection architecture and several interconnection strategies, all of them adapting the traditional policy decision and enforcement approaches together with the blockchain technology to manage reliable and secure connections among entities, processes and critical resources. With this architecture in mind, the paper also analyzes the coupling level of the blockchain technology, and explores which interconnection strategy is more suitable for Smart Grid domains and their control systems.
In the emerging world of IoT applications, machines are going to be at the endpoints of the Internet engaging in complex Machine to Machine (M2M) communications. Be it a personal assistant (softbot)making an appointment with a doctor or an autonomous car filling fuel or charging at a refueling station, in the future, it is going to be M2M communications without human intervention. In such a scenario, robust and secure technology is essential to record every M2M transactions. This paper makes use of blockchain, a distributed ledger technology for intelligent transportation systems. It is proposed that blockchain networks such as Ethereum have the foundations to record and satisfy the transaction that has happened between the machines. A permissioned Ethereum blockchain the smart contract is used for recording each every transaction that come off between the car and electric station. An algorithm is proposed to recharge the autonomous electric vehicles as a case study.
In legacy blockchain based systems, each involved node has to store a complete blockchain to ensure the system security without any central authoritative controller. However, it is usually impossible for a wireless IoT node to store a complete blockchain, especially for those simple sensor nodes without sufficient storage and computing resources. In this paper, we propose a block assignment scheme for blockchain based wireless IoT systems with aim to tackle the blockchain storage problem. Specifically, we propose to maintain a complete blockchain by a set of IoT nodes in a collaborative way on the premise of ensuring that each node can check every transaction. On the other hand, we should save the storage space of IoT nodes to the greatest extent for saving more blocks so as to maximize the lifetime of IoT nodes. We formulate this optimal block assignment problem as a 0-1 mixed integer-programming problem. We propose to incorporate Chaotic optimized algorithm into Genetic algorithm to provide an efficient near-optimal solution. Compared with the brute-force and conventional Genetic algorithms, our proposed algorithm can achieve the minimum storage occupancy to store blocks. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm has the lowest computational complexity.
The articles in this special issue have solicited high-quality manuscripts that describe in-depth the breadth of real-world blockchain-based multi-disciplinary IIoT deployments and present actual experiences in resolving contextual blockchain-related challenges. In addition, these articles develop and share best practices, vision realizations and lessons learned in this integrated environment and establish guiding principles for technical, operational and business successes.
Cloud of Things (CoT) refers to an IoT solution consuming the cloud services of a single cloud vendor. In this article, we have introduced the concept of a MultiCoT (http://www.MultiCoT.com) solution which refers to the collaborative execution of an IoT solution by multiple cloud vendors. Cloudlets and ad-hoc clouds are the extensions of centralized cloud services, closer to the user, in the form of fog and edge computing layers respectively and the Osmotic Computing (OC) serves as a glue by accomplishing the seamless compute sharing across these layers. The OC can also be integrated within a MultiCoT solution for extending it across three computational layers of cloud, fog and edge. However, this can only be achieved after establishing enough trust among all the vendors that are working in collaboration to simultaneously serve a particular MultiCoT solution. Blockchain has been already proven for establishing trust and supporting reliable interactions among independently operating entities. Hence, it can be used for establishing trust among the multiple cloud vendors serving a single MultiCoT solution. In this article, we have presented the importance of using the proactive Blockchain-enabled Osmotic Manager (B-OM) for improving the reliability of OC. We have also highlighted the blockchain features that can improve the reliability of OC by establishing trust among the independently operating vendors of a MultiCoT solution, followed by the challenges associated with the integration of blockchain and OC along with the future research directions for achieving the proposed integration.
The past decade has seen a huge growth not only in the Internet of Things (IoT) but also in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) from both academia and industry. Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) combine a variety of sensors, IoT devices, control units, gateways, etc. Therefore, the software of the different sensors and IoT devices needs to be updated to the latest version by the Software Vendors. This paper proposes a blockchain-based identity and trust management framework for the IoV ecosystem, that aims to provide secure software updates. The proposed framework consists of two processes: the identification and registration of the entities of the ecosystem, and the authentication of the entities which relies on established W3C standards for defining verifiable credential presentation, verification, and revocation. We illustrate the feasibility of our approach in a case study.
Since the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT), connected devices became smart and autonomous. Their exponentially increasing number and their use in many application domains result in a huge potential of cybersecurity threats. Taking into account the evolution of the IoT, security and interoperability are the main challenges, to ensure the reliability of the information. The blockchain technology provides a new approach to handle the trust in a decentralized network. However, current blockchain implementations cannot be used in the IoT domain because of their huge need for computing power and storage utilization. This paper provides a lightweight distributed ledger protocol dedicated to the IoT application, reducing the computing power and storage utilization, handling the scalability and ensuring the reliability of the information.
Teng Zhang, Ren Yucheng, Cao Xiaodong, Kang Xie · 5 authors
Abstract In order to promote the synergistic interaction between source network and storage, and enhance the load control capability, the adjustable load measurement technology based on blockchain has become the focus of research at home and abroad. This paper reviews the current research status of block chain technology and its application in declaration and issuance, market supervision, market settlement, load measurement, enhancing mutual trust of market transactions and information security. Distributed ledger from block chain under containerized edge service engine, improved directed and acyclic chart distributed ledger structure and adjustable load execution score three based on distributed ledger data. In this respect, the key and difficult points of technology are summarized. Combined with the current situation of power development demand, power market, electricity price mode, demand response, the possible problems and development trend of adjustable load measurement technology based on block chain are discussed in detail.
The blockchain technology firstly presented by Haber and Stornetta in the year 1990, and first time blockchain technology used in Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The blockchain technology is truly decentralized technology. In blockchain technology, every block has consisted three main parts that is data, hash block, and the previous hash block. Hash is controls the uniqueness of each block and it is unique for each block. Each block also contains the hash of the previous block; thus, the blocks are connected to each other. A blockchain can divided into three categories public blockchain, consortium blockchain and private blockchain. The proposed paper provided the comparative and analytical review on the blockchain consensus algorithms.
Abstract Blockchain technology and Internet of Things technology are two new technologies formed in the current transmission of information technology. In the implementation of its technical control, it can scientifically control the information sharing work and realize the artificial adjustment of the transmission control of the Internet of Things technology. In this paper, research on the Internet of Things data sharing model based on block chain with a view to provide guidance to the security of Things data sharing technology under the block chain. In this paper, Hyperledger Fabric block chain platform-based platform, proposed a block-based chain of IOT data sharing model, security and data privacy is an enhancement, obtained by the performance of the test model. Throughput is maximized when the write transaction sending frequency is 100 TPS and the query transaction sending frequency is 250 TPS. The maximum write throughput is 60 TPS, which is better than Bitcoin and Ethereum on the public chain, which proves the feasibility of the model implementation. This model can achieve storage and sharing without the help of a third-party centralized organization, and directly establish trust between participants, which can ensure the safe sharing of data.
G Pazhev, Gr. Spasov, Mitko Shopov, Galidiya Petrova
Abstract The paper presents an implementation of a smart home architecture with two gateways based on collaboration of blockchain technology and Internet of Things (IoT) Message oriented middleware (MOM) architecture for management of internal home appliances. A basic overview of IoT MOM, MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transfer) protocol and blockchain architectures is made and the key characteristics and consensus algorithms are presented. Some challenges and the Ethereum smart contracts concept of the blockchain technology are discussed.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Jiejun Hu, Martin J. Reed, Mays Al-Naday, Nikolaos Thomos
The Internet of Things (IoT) connected by Software Defined Networking (SDN) promises to bring great benefits to cyber-physical systems. However, the increased attack surface offered by the growing number of connected vulnerable devices and complex nature of SDN control plane applications could overturn the huge benefits of such a system. This paper addresses the vulnerability of some unspecified security flaw in the SDN control plane application (such as a zero-day software vulnerability) which can be exploited to insert malicious flow rules in the switch that do not match network policies. Specifically, we propose a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) based framework that supports switch flow verification and insertion; and additionally provides straightforward deployment of blockchain technology within an existing SDN infrastructure. While use of an external BaaS brings straightforward deployment, it obscures knowledge of the blockchain agents who are responsible for flow conformance testing through a smart blockchain contract, leading to potential exploitation. Thus, we design a strategy to prevent the blockchain agents from acting arbitrarily, as this would result in what is termed a "moral hazard". We achieve this by developing a novel mathematical model of the fair reward scheme based on game theory. To understand the performance of our system, we evaluate our model using a Matlab based simulation framework. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm balances the needs of the blockchain agents to maximise the overall social welfare, i.e. the sum of profits across all parties.
Gino Carrozzo, Muhammad Shuaib Siddiqui, August Betzler, José Bonnet · 7 authors
The 5G network solutions currently standardised and deployed do not yet enable the full potential of pervasive networking and computing envisioned in 5G initial visions: network services and slices with different QoS profiles do not span multiple operators; security, trust and automation is limited. The evolution of 5G towards a truly production-level stage needs to heavily rely on automated end-to-end network operations, use of distributed Artificial Intelligence (AI) for cognitive network orchestration and management and minimal manual interventions (zero-touch automation). All these elements are key to implement highly pervasive network infrastructures. Moreover, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) can be adopted to implement distributed security and trust through Smart Contracts among multiple non-trusted parties. In this paper, we propose an initial concept of a zero-touch security and trust architecture for ubiquitous computing and connectivity in 5G networks. Our architecture aims at cross-domain security & trust orchestration mechanisms by coupling DLTs with AI-driven operations and service lifecycle automation in multi-tenant and multi-stakeholder environments. Three representative use cases are identified through which we will validate the work which will be validated in the test facilities at 5GBarcelona and 5TONIC/Madrid.
Weikang Liu, Bin Cao, Lei Zhang, Mugen Peng · 5 authors
Keeping patients' sensitive information secured and untampered in the e-Health system is of paramount importance. Emerging as a promising technology to build a secure and reliable distributed ledger, blockchain can protect data from being falsified, which has attracted much attention from both academia and industry. However, with limited computational resources, medical IoT devices do not have efficient ability to fulfill the functionalities as a full node in wireless blockchain network (WBN). Facing this dilemma, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) brings us dawn and hope through offloading the high resource demanding blockchain functionalities at the IoT devices to the MEC. However, aiming to maximize the mining profit, most of existing offloading strategies have ignored the other needs of wireless devices, e.g., faster transaction writing. In this paper, according to different needs, blockchain nodes are firstly divided into two categories. One is blockchain users whose needs are faster transaction uploading, the other is blockchain miners whose goals are maximum revenue. Then, to maximize both the utilities of blockchain users and blockchain miners, a Stackelberg game is introduced to formulate the interaction between them. From the simulation results, this game is proved to converge to a unique optimal equilibrium.
Samson Kahsay Gebresilassie, Joseph Rafferty, Philip Morrow, Liming Chen · 6 authors
The growth of Internet use due to the emergence of new paradigms including social media and the Internet of Things (IoT) has presented several challenges. Within the IoT paradigm, there are several domain-specific challenges, among which security is crucial. Billions of devices in the IoT ecosystem have the responsibility of generating, processing, and analyzing large volumes of data. This data may connect with organizations, services, billions of people and other devices. This high level of interconnectivity creates a complex and heterogeneous network which is challenging to adequately secure the IoT system. IoT devices are smart, diverse, portable, interoperable, often autonomous and deployed in distributed topology. Properly managing the identities of these IoT devices plays a critical role in achieving the security of the overall IoT ecosystem. Notably, existing identity management systems fail to satisfy the requirements of identity management for IoT devices. We present a novel solution for IoT devices identity management based on self-sovereign identity and underpinned by proven security offered by distributed ledger technology. This novel approach provides a secure, portable, decentralized, persistent, unique, interoperable, self-owned and self-controlled identity for IoT devices. A Device's identity with all its relationships in the IoT system are securely managed throughout its entire lifecycle.
Dayadi Lakshmaiah, L. Koteswara Rao, R. Yadgiri Rao, I. Satya Narayana · 5 authors
Data security for IOT devices is very import aspect these days as the world is moving towards digitalization. Consider a smart energy meter which provides a way to monitor the energy consumption at home, data security in such smart meter reading is very important. If the Power reading signals are tampered, then it may cause serious economic loss for the authorities. The personal information infringement of user can occur at the database and may fall in the hands of unethical persons. In order to address these issues in this paper we propose to use a permissioned blockchain network. Blockchain maintains time stamped ledger records that are very hard to tamper. Every transaction is recorded and distributed across many participant nodes, these records are immutable because they have blocks of data which are linked to each other with strong cryptographic hash. The blockchain network is built using hyperledger fabric, where all the participant nodes are registered and only registered nodes involve in consensus process of transaction. In fabric, MSP (membership service provider) identifies the identity of the participant nodes through X.509 digital certificates issued by certificate authority. Along with creation of blockchain network for the application, a mobile client, a web client, an Arduino client and web server is created. The Arduino client is the hardware module that has an energy meter (SDM120) measuring the energy consumption of the user and sends this information serially to NODEMCU. NODEMCU POSTs the read energy details to the web server at particular api, web server POSTs the details to the Blockchain Network, where transactions undergoes consensus to add this information to blockchain ledger. Now data is decentralized and every peer node has the local copy of ledger. The updated information can be queried and seen on the web Client and Mobile client user interfaces. Anonymity-enhanced blockchain has been implemented to avoid the disclosure of personal information or data. Also performance analysis of the application is carried out for number of sequential requests and concurrent requests from many users using different tools.
Victor Pasknel de Alencar Ribeiro, Raimir Holanda Filho, Alex Ramos, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues
Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is one of the enabling technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT), and focuses on providing long distance connectivity for a vast amount of smart devices. Currently, LoRa is one of the leading LPWAN solutions available for public use. In LPWANs, especially in LoRa, security is a major concern due to the resource constraints of the devices, the sensitivity level of the transmitted data, the large amount of connected devices, among other reasons. This paper studies the key management mechanism of LoRaWAN environments. A secure architecture for key management based on smart contracts and permissioned blockchain to enhance security and availability in LoRaWAN networks is proposed. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed blockchain-based LoRaWAN architecture, a working prototype has been created using open-source tools and commodity hardware. Performance analysis shows that the prototype presents similar execution time and latency values, when compared to a traditional system, especially for small and medium-sized LoRaWAN networks. We also discuss why the proposed solution can be used in environments with a large number of end-devices.
Federation of services, as a 5G networks concept, aims to provide orchestration of services across multiple administrative domains. In this paper, we are exploring a solution of applying distributed ledger technologies, precisely the combination of blockchain and smart contracts, to enable highly secure, private, fast and distributed interaction between administrative domains in the federation process. Along with the designed solution, we developed an experimental prototype that requires simple one‐time setup and fast simultaneous registration time for multiple administrative domains. Obtained results show single service federation times (without considering the deployment time) of around 5 seconds.
Rafael Belchior, André Vasconcelos, Sérgio Guerreiro, Miguel Correia
Blockchain interoperability is emerging as one of the crucial features of blockchain technology, but the knowledge necessary for achieving it is fragmented. This fact makes it challenging for academics and the industry to seamlessly achieve interoperability among blockchains. Given the novelty and potential of this new domain, we conduct a literature review on blockchain interoperability, by collecting 262 papers, and 70 grey literature documents, constituting a corpus of 332 documents. From those 332 documents, we systematically analyzed and discussed 80 documents, including both peer-reviewed papers and grey literature. Our review classifies studies in three categories: Cryptocurrency-directed interoperability approaches, Blockchain Engines, and Blockchain Connectors. Each category is further divided into sub-categories based on defined criteria. We discuss not only studies within each category and subcategory but also across categories, providing a holistic overview of blockchain interoperability, paving the way for systematic research in this domain. Our findings show that blockchain interoperability has a much broader spectrum than cryptocurrencies. The present survey leverages an interesting approach: we systematically contacted the authors of grey literature papers and industry solutions to obtain an updated view of their work. Finally, this paper discusses supporting technologies, standards, use cases, open challenges, and provides several future research directions.