Ahmad J. Alkhodair, Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has been introduced using the most common consensus algorithm either for an electronic cash system or a decentralized programmable assets platform which provides general services. Most established reliable networks are unsuitable for all applications such as smart cities applications, and, in particular, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) applications. The purpose of this paper is to provide a suitable DLT for IoT and CPS that could satisfy their requirements. The proposed work has been designed based on the requirements of Cyber Physical Systems. FlexiChain is proposed as a layer zero network that could be formed from independent blockchains. Also, NodeChain has been introduced to be a distributed (Unique ID) UID aggregation vault to secure all nodes' UIDs. Moreover, NodeChain is proposed to serve mainly FlexiChain for all node security requirements. NodeChain targets the security and integrity of each node. Also, the linked UIDs create a chain of narration that keeps track not merely for assets but also for who authenticated the assets. The security results present a higher resistance against four types of attacks. Furthermore, the strength of the network is presented from the early stages compared to blockchain and central authority. FlexiChain technology has been introduced to be a layer zero network for all CPS decentralized applications taking into accounts their requirements. FlexiChain relies on lightweight processing mechanisms and creates other methods to increase security.
Sireejaa Uppal, Bindiya Kansekar, S. Mini, Deepak K. Tosh
The Healthcare industry demands increased privacy and security to protect confidential patient information and comply with regulations. Both these features can be incorporated into the existing systems using Blockchain technology. The only challenge faced here is the ease of users, but this can be quickly resolved by integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain. IoT-based devices overcome limited computing capacity for personal intelligent health devices. Cloud-assisted IoT devices also require limited storage capacity for devices like wearable sensors. However, it must be considered that this system still has drawbacks, leading to its inefficiency. These problems include Data Privacy and Data sharing. This paper proposes an Interplanetary File System (IPFS) based solution to these problems. Here, the users continually upload the health data collected by IoT devices and add them to blockchain transactions that the other user nodes, such as physicians, pharmacists, insurance companies, hospital authorities, etc., can access. This system ensures the well-being of the users by monitoring the data gathered every 5 min and daily. It also facilitates the alarm feature in an emergency, making it reliable. The user receives daily notifications regarding his lifestyle, and the family members receive the notifications on his behalf if there are some chances of an emergency. The authorized doctors are also notified immediately in case an emergency is detected. Apart from this feature, the user can get consultations from doctors, prescriptions from the pharmacist, funds from insurance authorities, and hospital supplies, all through the transaction on the six blockchains of HealthDote using the cryptocurrency DoteCoins, which are designed specifically for this system.
E-commerce platforms enable companies of all sizes to sell their items and promote their brand to a broader audience. The e-commerce sector is continually developing, as new technology and methods of purchasing and selling services and items are developed. The traditional e-commerce system is plagued with problems, such as payment disputes, chargebacks, fraud, and a lack of transparency; however, blockchain can transform e-commerce by making transactions more efficient and safer. Blockchain can be used to build a decentralized network that allows people to securely store and share digital assets. This would enable buyers to access product details such as the product’s origin and source, as well as reduce the risk of fraud. Although the application of blockchain in e-commerce remains in its early stages, this review paper examines research on blockchain-based e-commerce, focusing on applicability and problems in the context of the available literature from 2017 through 2022.
Kazi Masum Sadique, Rahim Rahmani, Paul Johannesson
The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm aims to enhance human society and living standards with the vast deployment of smart and autonomous devices, which requires seamless collaboration. The number of connected devices increases daily, introducing identity management requirements for edge IoT devices. Due to IoT devices' heterogeneity and resource-constrained configuration, traditional identity management systems are not feasible. As a result, identity management for IoT devices is still an open issue. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain-based security solutions are becoming popular in different application domains. This paper presents a novel DLT-based distributed identity management architecture for edge IoT devices. The model can be adapted with any IoT solution for secure and trustworthy communication between devices. We have comprehensively reviewed popular consensus mechanisms used in DLT implementations and their connection to IoT research, specifically identity management for Edge IoT devices. Our proposed location-based identity management model is generic, distributed, and decentralized. The proposed model is verified using the Scyther formal verification tool for security performance measurement. SPIN model checker is employed for different state verification of our proposed model. The open-source simulation tool FobSim is used for fog and edge/user layer DTL deployment performance analysis. The results and discussion section represents how our proposed decentralized identity management solution should enhance user data privacy and secure and trustworthy communication in IoT.
The Internet of Things provides convenience to health systems, especially for remote monitoring of patient physical indicators. While providing convenience, there may be more security vulnerabilities in protecting patient and doctor information and storing health data effectively. As an important research branch in the field of the Internet of Things, the Internet of Medical Things is important for the overall improvement of public health in terms of how to safely conduct technology development and application research and to effectively implement healthcare needs. Blockchain technology is decentralized and untrusted as well as prevents tampering with data and reduces the cost of trust. Its good performance has a strong developmental nature in the healthcare field. This paper analyses how to solve security problems through access control under the Internet of Medical Things, and optimizes three access control methods. The Internet of Medical Things accesses control approach that introduces blockchain technology enhances computational and storage capabilities and is a good solution to the problem of third-party trustworthiness. Even in the face of the rapid growth of end devices, blockchain technology can solve some of the problems arising from access control of massive devices through three directions: hierarchical management, compressed storage and performance optimization. Finally, it provides directions for future research on the security aspects of blockchain technology under the Internet of Medical Things.
Jie Xu, Qingyuan Xie, Sen Peng, Cong Wang · 5 authors
Although existing schemes improve blockchain throughput by allowing concurrent blocks to be appended to the blockchain, little attention has been devoted to adjusting blockchain throughput dynamically and deduplicating transactions between concurrent blocks. In this article, we propose AdaptChain, an adaptive scaling blockchain with transaction deduplication. When the transaction demand of users in the network is high, the blockchain expands to meet the demand; when the transaction demand is low, the blockchain shrinks to save communication and storage costs. Our transaction deduplication mechanism ensures that no duplicate transactions are added to the blockchain, thereby improving bandwidth utilization and achieving higher effective throughput. Besides, we randomly split the mining power of the system to achieve mining power load balancing and resist attacks. We formally analyze the blockchain security and implement the proposed prototype on Amazon EC2. Experimental results show that AdaptChain achieves dynamic and higher effective blockchain throughput.
Smart cities are data driven and collect data from a variety of sources. Certain types of data such as building data is under-represented and remains harder to find despite its value. Our goal is to incentivise the stakeholders to make building data easier to avail by turning it into an asset. We use tokenized building data assets on a blockchain to improve data accessibility. This is achieved by connecting building data owners with the consumers of building information via tokens (fungible and non-fungible), which serves the purpose of coordinating the activities of the built ecosystem. Further, we present our system architecture designed to sustain the economic incentives for interested parties and individuals.
Blockchain has attracted significant attention in recent years due to its potential to revolutionize various industries by providing trustlessness. To comprehensively examine blockchain systems, this article presents both a macro-level overview on the most popular blockchain systems, and a micro-level analysis on a general blockchain framework and its crucial components. The macro-level exploration provides a big picture on the endeavors made by blockchain professionals over the years to enhance the blockchain performance while the micro-level investigation details the blockchain building blocks for deep technology comprehension. More specifically, this article introduces a general modular blockchain analytic framework that decomposes a blockchain system into interacting modules and then examines the major modules to cover the essential blockchain components of network, consensus, and distributed ledger at the micro-level. The framework as well as the modular analysis jointly build a foundation for designing scalable, flexible, and application-adaptive blockchains that can meet diverse requirements. Additionally, this article explores popular technologies that can be integrated with blockchain to expand functionality and highlights major challenges. Such a study provides critical insights to overcome the obstacles in designing novel blockchain systems and facilitates the further development of blockchain as a digital infrastructure to service new applications.
Blockchain can effectively deal with the security and trust issues in Internet of Things (IoT) due to its salient features including decentralization, immutability, traceability, openness, and transparency. However, most IoT devices have too limited computing, storage, and bandwidth resources to maintain the complete operation of a blockchain system. To this end, we propose a hierarchical blockchain framework called HLOChain for IoT scenarios. First, according to computing and storage capabilities, the IoT devices are classified into three levels, i.e., high, medium, and low. They are deployed on different layers. In this way, a hierarchical blockchain architecture is designed. Second, we propose a lightweight proof of random (PoR) consensus mechanism to provide low-energy block mining, so that even the medium nodes can participate in the consensus task. Third, in order to reduce the ledger storage overhead, we design a blockchain storage optimization strategy based on the account model. Finally, the security analysis demonstrates that our HLOChain is secure against double-spend attack, Sybil attack, and so on. The experimental evaluation shows that our HLOChain achieves better performance in ledger storage cost, consensus computing cost, throughput, and transaction confirmation latency.
Distributed computing is a business and monetary model permitting the clients to use top of the line registering and stockpiling practically with insignificant foundation on their end. In current medical care frameworks, electronic clinical records (EMRs) are modernized records which contains rundown of insights about patients wellbeing. Electronic clinical records are compelling contrasted with the current traditional stockpiling approaches because of its unified stockpiling of information, it prompts weak link as patients being the genuine proprietor forget about their private and delicate EMRs. Distributed computing utilizing encryption calculation is one of the critical figure the clinical administration framework which permits the clients to get to the wellbeing subtleties of patients in the safeguarded manner. The proposed work is to fabricate an encoded admittance control structure, contrasting the different encryption calculations accessible and utilize the most ideal calculation to get the sharing of EMRs among various elements associated with the shrewd medical services framework. Keywords- Medical Care; Electronic Clinical Records
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) plays an important role in strengthening sustainable healthcare systems. IoMT significantly influences our healthcare because it facilitates monitoring and checking patient medical information before transferring the data to a cloud network for future use. The IoMT is a big-data platform which is growing rapidly, so it is critical to maintain all data safely and securely. In this study, Blockchain-Assisted Cybersecurity (BCCS) for the IoMT in the healthcare industry is proposed. Blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that allows end-to-end communication and provides interaction between untrustworthy persons. BCCS uses a conventional in-depth approach and blockchain to create a procedure for collecting medical information from the IoMT and integrated devices. The proposed system utilizes blockchain to record and extract the accumulated information in a secure and distributed manner within a closed environment suitable for healthcare professionals, such as nursing homes, hospitals, and the healthcare industry where data exchange is needed. The experimental outcomes show that the proposed system has a high security rate of 99.8% and the lowest latency rate of 4.3% compared to traditional approaches. In all, the reliability of the proposed system gives the highest rate of 99.4%.
Igor Y. Mazurok, Yevhen Leonchyk, Sergii Grybniak, Alisa Vorokhta · 5 authors
Decentralized platforms like blockchain have been attracting significant attention in recent years, especially in the context of financial and payment systems. They are designed to provide a transparent, secure, and reliable environment for digital transactions without the need for a central authority. The core of a decentralized platform like blockchain is a consensus layer that allows all participants (called Workers), who properly operate and follow all network protocols and have access to the same state of the distributed ledger, to coordinate their actions and arrive at the same decisions. However, some Workers may be temporarily offline attheir own discretion, without any confirmation, or their work may be faulty due to technical circumstances, resulting in unpredictablebehavior. The goal of this article is to present an approach for multi-objective optimizing of Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT)-basedconsensus protocols, to reduce the impact on the network of faulty participants. Two criteria were considered – minimization of thenumber of sent service messages, and maximization of the mathematical expectation of the number of produced blocks. The result isa method to determine the optimal committee size and distribution of Workers, depending on their total number in the network andthe expected proportion of Byzantine faulty nodes. All protocol amendments presented in this work are tested with corresponding simulation models and have demonstrated notable enhancements in the performance of the system and decreased the load on network nodes. These improvements will be implemented to the consensus protocol Gozalandia on the Waterfall platform, enhancing itsoverall reliability, performance, and security. In addition, the presented optimizing algorithm can be applied to a wide range of consensus protocols in blockchains, where blocks must be signed by randomly selected committees to confirm their validity.
Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger with records of data containing all details of the transactions carried out and distributed among the nodes present in the network. All the transactions carried out in the system are confirmed by consensus mechanisms, and the data once stored cannot be altered. Blockchain technology is the necessary technology behind Bitcoin, which is a popular digital Cryptocurrency. ''Cloud computing is a practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer and high computational power. It is still facing many challenges like data security, data management, compliance, reliability. In this article, we have mentioned some of the significant challenges faced by the cloud and proposed solutions by integrating it with blockchain technology. Many devices connected to grid help in exchange of information with power system using cloud computing. INDEX TERMS Cloud computing, Blockchain Technology, data security, decentralization.
Ahmed Mohsen Yassin, Heba K. Aslan, Islam Tharwat Abdel Halim
The automotive industry currently is seeking to increase remote connectivity to a vehicle, which creates a high demand to implement a secure way of connecting vehicles, as well as verifying and storing their data in a trusted way. Furthermore, much information must be leaked in order to correctly diagnose the vehicle and determine when or how to remotely update it. In this context, we propose a Blockchain-based, fully automated remote vehicle diagnosis system. The proposed system provides a secure and trusted way of storing and verifying vehicle data and analyzing their performance in different environments. Furthermore, we discuss many aspects of the benefits to different parties, such as the vehicle’s owner and manufacturers. Furthermore, a performance evaluation via simulation was performed on the proposed system using MATLAB Simulink to simulate both the vehicles and Blockchain and give a prototype for the system’s structure. In addition, OMNET++ was used to measure the expected system’s storage and throughput given some fixed parameters, such as sending the periodicity and speed. The simulation results showed that the throughput, end-to-end delay, and power consumption increased as the number of vehicles increased. In general, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) can implement this system by taking into consideration either increasing the storage to add more vehicles or decreasing the sending frequency to allow more vehicles to join. By and large, the proposed system is fully dynamic, and its configuration can be adjusted to satisfy the OEM’s needs since there are no specific constraints while implementing it.
The healthcare industry has been transitioning from paper-based medical records to electronic health records (EHRs) in most healthcare facilities. However, the current EHR frameworks face challenges in secure data storage, credibility, and management. Interoperability and user control of personal data are also significant concerns in the healthcare sector. Although block chain technology has emerged as a powerful solution that can offer the properties of immutability, security, and user control on stored records, its potential application in EHR frameworks is not yet fully understood. To address this gap in knowledge, this research aims to provide an interoperable blockchain-based EHR framework that can fulfill the requirements defined by various national and international EHR standards such as HIPAA and HL7. The research method employed is a systematic literature review to explore the current state of the art in the field of EHRs, including blockchain-based implementations of EHRs. The study defines the interoperability issues in the existing blockchain-based EHR frameworks, reviews various national and international standards of EHR, and further defines the interoperability requirements based on these standards. The proposed framework can offer safer methods to interchange health information for the healthcare sector and can provide the properties of immutability, security, and user control on stored records without the need for centralized storage. The contributions of this work include enhancing the understanding of the potential application of blockchain technology in EHR frameworks and proposing an interoperable blockchain-based EHR framework that can fulfill the requirements defined by various national and international EHR standards. Overall, this study has significant implications for the healthcare sector, as it can enhance the secure sharing and storage of electronic health data while ensuring the confidentiality, privacy, and integrity of medical records.
• A distributed data integrity verification method without third-party auditor is proposed. Based on the constructed hashTable, each hospital server can audit the data in a distributed manner. • A blockchain-based auditing scheme is designed for cloud-edge healthcare system, which includes the consensus protocol Proof of Auditing Frequency (PoAF) and related block structures. • The proposed scheme is evaluated against two start-of-the-art schemes in a simulated cloud-edge healthcare system and comprehensively evaluated. Cloud-edge healthcare system provides storage and computing functions at the hospital servers, bringing low latency for doctors and patients. However, hospital servers cannot be trusted and have limited computing resources. Data integrity verification for the cloud-edge healthcare system is an urgent concern. To this end, we proposed a data integrity auditing scheme based on blockchain. First, a distributed data integrity verification method without a third-party auditor is designed. The data are divided into smaller parts and hashed into a hash table. The verification tag is constructed according to the column of the hash table and secret string generated by a pseudo-random function. Then, a detailed blockchain-based data integrity auditing scheme is proposed, including Proof of Auditing Frequency and block structure. Besides, a security analysis for the common attacks is given. Finally, the proposed scheme is evaluated against two start-of-the-art schemes in a simulated cloud-edge healthcare system. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can verify data integrity without losing efficiency.
Bipasha Sarker, Numair Bin Sharif, Mohammad Atikur Rahman, A. H. M. Shahariar Parvez
The healthcare industry is adopting new technologies such as AI, IoMT, and blockchain to enhance patient outcomes, reduce costs, and improve operational efficiencies. These technologies can revolutionize healthcare by facilitating personalized patient-focused care, improving clinical outcomes, and reducing expenses. However, the implementation of these technologies requires collaboration between healthcare providers, technology companies, and regulatory bodies to ensure patient privacy and data security. This study explores the role of AI, IoMT, and blockchain in public healthcare and their current applications, obstacles, and future research areas. It emphasizes the advantages that these technologies bring to the IoT and the difficulties involved in their implementation.
Blockchain, the underlying technology powering the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, is a distributed ledger that creates a distributed consensus on a history of transactions. Cryptocurrency transaction verification takes substantially longer than it does for conventional digital payment systems. Despite blockchain’s appealing benefits, one of its main drawbacks is scalability. Designing a solution that delivers a quicker proof of work is one method for increasing scalability or the rate at which transactions are processed. In this paper, we suggest a solution based on parallel mining rather than solo mining to prevent more than two miners from contributing an equal amount of effort to solving a single block. Moreover, we propose the idea of automatically selecting the optimal manager over all miners by using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. This process solves many problems of blockchain scalability and makes the system more scalable by decreasing the waiting time if the manager fails to respond. Additionally, the proposed model includes the process of a reward system and the distribution of work. In this work, we propose the particle swarm optimization proof of work (PSO-POW) model. Three scenarios have been tested including solo mining, parallel mining without using the PSO process, and parallel mining using the PSO process (PSO-POW model) to ensure the power and robustness of the proposed model. This model has been tested using a range of case situations by adjusting the difficulty level and the number of peers. It has been implemented in a test environment that has all the qualities required to perform proof of work for Bitcoin. A comparison between three different scenarios has been constructed against difficulty levels and the number of peers. Local experimental assessments were carried out, and the findings show that the suggested strategy is workable, solves the scalability problems, and enhances the overall performance of the blockchain network.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
J. Andrew, Deva Priya Isravel, K. Martin Sagayam, Bharat Bhushan · 6 authors
Blockchain has become popular in recent times through its data integrity and wide scope of applications. It has laid the foundation for cryptocurrencies such as Ripple, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and so on. Blockchain provides a platform for decentralization and trust in various applications such as finance, commerce, IoT, reputation systems, and healthcare. However, prevailing challenges like scalability, resilience, security and privacy are yet to be overcome. Due to rigorous regulatory constraints such as HIPAA, blockchain applications in the healthcare industry usually require more stringent authentication, interoperability, and record sharing requirements. This article presents an extensive study to showcase the significance of blockchain technology from both application and technical perspectives for healthcare domain. The article discusses the features and use-cases of blockchain in different applications along with the healthcare domain interoperability. The detailed working operation of the blockchain and the consensus algorithms are presented in the context of healthcare. An outline of the blockchain architecture, platforms, and classifications are discussed to choose the right platform for healthcare applications. The current state-of-the-art research in healthcare blockchain and available blockchain based healthcare applications are summarized. Furthermore, the challenges and future research opportunities along with the performance evaluation metrics in realizing the blockchain technology for healthcare are presented to provide insight for future research. We also layout the various security attacks on the blockchain protocol with the classifications of threat models and presented a comparative analysis of the detection and protection techniques. Techniques to enhance the security and privacy of the blockchain network is also discussed.
The exponential growth in the global population and significant advancements in healthcare broadened the scope of intervention for e-Healthcare through decentralized data access and information exchange, making complex clinical decisions. e-Healthcare can perform several functionalities, including EHR communication, telemedicine, and complex clinical decision systems (CCDS), but large-scale users still find it challenging to maintain interoperability, stability, and scalability. Accommodating an extensive array of stakeholders, which includes patients, doctors, hospitals, and laboratories, demands interoperability to serve scalable services. FHIR frameworks have played a vital role in e-Healthcare designs. Most of the existing HL7-FHIR frameworks have used REST-API using HTTP-query for CRUD tasks that impose numerous rules and constraints, making the process more complex and time-consuming, violating the quality-of-service (QoS) standards on different levels. This paper develops a novel, robust Smart-Contract Authentication Assisted HL7-FHIR framework toward an interoperable e-Healthcare solution. Unlike classical REST API-based FHIR, our proposed method applies a Graph-mapping concept that transforms each resource variable into an equivalent Graph-Mapped Data Structure (GMS), which is subsequently stored in the NoSQL MongoDB database, reducing computational costs and time to meet QoS demands. The proposed model employs three key components, GMS-driven HL7 FHIR Gateway Model, Smart Contract Authentication and Client Model. The Smart Contract function helped verify and authenticate users to ensure privacy and secure EHR exchange. The assessment of the performance of the proposed model reveals a significant reduction in computational time with optimal resource utilization making it a significant and viable option to better the real-world e-Healthcare mechanisms.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
Abstract A Service Level Agreement (SLA) establishes the trustworthiness of service providers and consumers in several domains; including the Internet of Things (IoT). Given the proliferation of Blockchain technology, we find it compelling to reconsider the assumption of trust and centralised governance typically practised in SLA management including monitoring, compliance assessment, and penalty enforcement. Therefore, we argue that, such critical tasks should be operated by blockchain-based smart contracts in a non-repudiable manner beyond the influence of any SLA party. This paper envisions an IoT scenario wherein a firefighting station outsources end-to-end IoT operations to a specialised service provider. The contractual relationship between them is governed by an SLA which stipulates a set of quality requirements and violation consequences. The main contribution of this paper lies in designing, deploying and empirically experimenting a novel blockchain-based SLA monitoring and compliance assessment framework in the context of IoT. This is done by utilising Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), an enterprise-grade blockchain technology. Our work highlights a set of considerations and best practice at two sides, the IoT application monitoring-side and the blockchain-side. Moreover, it experimentally validates the reliability of the proposed monitoring approach, which collects relevant metrics from each IoT component and examines them against the quality requirements stated in the SLA. Finally, we propose a novel design for smart contracts at the blockchain-side, analyse and benchmark the performance, and demonstrate that the new design proves to successfully handle Multiversion Concurrency Control (MVCC) conflicts typically encountered in blockchain applications, while maintaining sound throughput and latency.
Sajad Meisami, Sadaf Meisami, Melina Yousefi, Mohammad Reza Aref
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in a significant increase in research on e-health. As the amount of patient data grows, it has become increasingly challenging to protect patients' privacy. Patient data is commonly stored in the cloud, making it difficult for users to control and protect their information. Moreover, the recent rise in security and surveillance breaches in the healthcare industry has highlighted the need for a better approach to data storage and protection. Traditional models that rely on third-party control over patients' healthcare data are no longer reliable, as they have proven vulnerable to security breaches. To address these issues, blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution. Blockchain-based protocols have the potential to provide a secure and efficient system for e-health applications that does not require trust in third-party intermediaries. The proposed protocol outlined in this paper uses a blockchain-based approach to manage patient data securely and efficiently. Unlike Bitcoin, which is primarily used for financial transactions, the protocol described here is designed specifically for e-health applications. It employs a consensus mechanism that is more suitable for resource constrained IoT devices, thereby reducing network costs and increasing efficiency. The proposed protocol also provides a privacy-preserving access control mechanism that enables patients to have more control over their healthcare data. By leveraging blockchain technology, the protocol ensures that only authorized individuals can access the patient's data, which helps prevent data breaches and other security issues. Finally, the security and privacy of the proposed protocol are analysed to ensure that it meets the necessary standards for data protection. The protocol's effectiveness and efficiency are tested under different scenarios to ensure that it can perform reliably and consistently. Finally, the protocol proposed in this paper shows that how blockchain can be used to provide a secure and efficient system that empowers patients to take control of their healthcare data.
Novak Boškov, Ari Trachtenberg, David Starobinski
The problem of data synchronization arises in networked applications that require some measure of consistency. Indeed data synchronization approaches have demonstrated a significant potential for improving performance in various applications ranging from distributed ledgers to fog-enabled storage offloading for IoT. Although several protocols for data sets synchronization have been proposed over the years, there is currently no widespread utility implementing them, unlike the popular Rsync utility available for file synchronization. To that end, we describe a new middleware called GenSync that abstracts the subtleties of the state-of-the-art data synchronization protocols, allows users to choose protocols based on a comparative evaluation under realistic system conditions, and seamlessly integrate protocols in existing applications through a public API. We showcase GenSync through a case study, in which we integrate it into one of the world's largest wireless emulators and compare the performance of its included protocols.