Most recent research on healthcare systems has focused on integrating the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain technology, and cloud computing to enhance the performance of IoT devices with limited resource availability, create smart healthcare platforms, and offer patients the best possible healthcare service. Modern healthcare systems use large-scale sensor devices to address many challenges brought on by the conventional delivery of healthcare services. Most studies have lately identified data collection, massive data processing, geolocating, access management, device prioritization, and storing as primary issues in most IoT healthcare systems. Decentralization, privacy, security, scalability, trust, anonymity, and building geospatial-based intelligent healthcare systems for patient care are significant difficulties that most healthcare systems today must overcome. Blockchain technology in healthcare platforms is noteworthy and innovative since it opens platforms for data privacy, anonymity, and validity through the consensus process. In this work, we proposed a novel decentralized Blockchain-enabled geospatial service architecture for smart healthcare systems calledBCGeo. The proposed framework offers an online geospatial healthcare service for residents of Bhubaneswar, a city in India, who are newcomers to the city and are less familiar with its local healthcare organizations. An analytical queueing method prioritizes serving Critical patients more than other patients. In contrast to previously proposed frameworks, the proposed framework includes immutability, scalability, geospatial mapping, patient prioritizing, and decentralized privacy protection policies for addressing the technical challenges in most of the current healthcare systems. Additionally, it explains the performance analysis ofBCGeo. It includes graphs showing the various possible outcomes of arithmetic operations, performance measurement, and experimental results on the proposed architecture.
Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) with the internet of things (IoT) plays an integral role in smart city developments and enables substantial developments in modern human lifestyles. With the emergence of Fifth-Generation (5G) communication technologies, high-speed communications are enabled among multiple internet-connected devices. However, security, reliability, and scalability are significant factors that affect the communication performance of ITS. The conventional security models are mostly centralized and unsuitable for distributed low-powered IoT-enabled 5G ITS. The new-age distributed ledger technology blockchain can improve the security and reliability of ITS services. Therefore, this paper investigates a blockchain-based security mechanism, Blockchainbased Secure IoT Communication (BSIC), that protects the 5G-ITS from potential security threats. The BSIC utilizes a consortium blockchain model with Improved Proof of Reputation (IPoR) to achieve its objectives. It handles the resource limitation issues of IoT by integrating Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) services. Further, the BSIC design includes two main components: reputation computation strategy and the IPoR mining process. The proposed model successfully builds a secure IoT communication system by integrating multi-criteria factors in subjective logic-based reputation estimation. It selects the miners by adjusting the consensus pool size according to network density and reputation and improves the consensus efficiency with minimum delay. Moreover, the experimental evaluations are carried out to analyze the efficiency of BSIC using performance metrics such as attack detection rate, consensus delay, and reputation estimation accuracy.
An IoT healthcare system refers to the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and technologies in the healthcare industry. It involves the integration of various interconnected devices, sensors, and systems to collect, monitor, and transmit health-related data for medical purposes. Blockchain-assisted intrusion detection on IoT healthcare systems is an innovative approach to enhancing the security and privacy of sensitive medical data. By combining the decentralized and immutable nature of blockchain technology with intrusion detection systems (IDS), it is possible to create a more robust and trustworthy security framework for IoT healthcare systems. With this motivation, this study presents Blockchain Assisted IoT Healthcare System using Ant Lion Optimizer with Hybrid Deep Learning (BHS-ALOHDL) technique. The presented BHS-ALOHDL technique enables IoT devices in the healthcare sector to transmit medical data securely and detects intrusions in the system. To accomplish this, the BHS-ALOHDL technique performs ALO based feature subset selection (ALO-FSS) system to produce a series of feature vectors. The HDL model integrates convolutional neural network (CNN) features and long short-term memory (LSTM) model for intrusion detection. Lastly, the flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is exploited for the optimal hyperparameter tuning of the HDL approach, which results in an enhanced detection rate. The experimental outcome of the BHS-ALOHDL system was tested on two benchmark datasets and the outcomes indicate the promising performance of the BHS-ALOHDL technique over other models.
Robert Muliawan Jaya, Valentino Dhamma Rakkhitta, Pranata Sembiring, Ivan Sebastian Edbert · 5 authors
Blockchain is a data storage technique in the form of blocks where the hash system and blocks that cannot be manipulated make blockchain suitable for storing important data. One of them is drug data, where currently in drug data, data manipulation often occurs which leads to drug counterfeiting. From previous research, blockchain in the medical world has been applied in storing patient history by utilizing smart contracts. Goals of blockchain application, drug data from manufacturers can be directly viewed and purchased by buyers. The research more towards innovation, blockchain as a database for storing drug data. Ethereum blockchain can be implemented and stored data can be well integrated with Smart Contract. The existence of smart contracts that support and facilitate transactions between producers and buyers. To maintain data security, system will be implementing access permissions in smart contracts to maintain data integrity and security. Eventually maintaining privacy, decentralization, transparency, and authentication in drug data and every drug transaction can be implemented properly.
Raaj Anand Mishra, Anshuman Kalla, An Braeken, Madhusanka Liyanage
Internet of Things (IoT) has proved its applicability in numerous domains such as healthcare, agriculture, automobile, industrial production, logistics and supply chain management. Looking at the current trend, we expect massive proliferation of such IoT devices all around us. However, one of the issues with the widespread use of IoT is the increasing complexity of the underlying architecture, which lead to difficulty in ensuring security compliance. One of the critical security processes is key refreshment, which needs to be regularly executed in order to guarantee strong security management. However, in most of the cases, keys are not updated and if they are updated, the update-logs are not available for all the entities to verify and build trust. Furthermore, the rules for key refreshment are also not defined in a transparent way. In this paper, we propose secure, decentralized, and automatic key refreshment mechanism for an IoT system. The proposed mechanism enables users to verify the freshness of the security keys (being used) thereby relying on the data from IoT devices and establishing trust in an IoT system. The proposed mechanism is driven by blockchain technology and smart contract. To demonstrate the viability of the proposed solution we have implemented it using both Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric blockchains.
Normaizeerah Mohd Noor, Noor Afiza Mat Razali, Sharifah Nabila S Azli Sham, Khairul Khalil Ishak · 6 authors
The convergence of farming with cutting-edge technologies, like the Internet of Things (IoT), has led to the emergence of a smart farming revolution. IoT facilitates the interconnection of numerous devices across different agricultural ecosystems, enabling automation and ultimately enhancing the efficiency and quality of production. However, the implementation of IoT entails an array of potential risks. The accelerated adoption of IoT in the domain of smart farming has amplified the existing cybersecurity concerns, specifically those pertaining to access control. In extensive IoT environments that require scalability, the conventional centralized access control system is insufficient. Therefore, to address these gaps, we propose a novel decentralized access control framework. The framework applies blockchain technology as the decentralization approach with smart contract application focuses on the application scenario in smart farming to protect and secure IoT devices from unauthorised access by anomalous entities. The proposed framework adopted attribute-based access control (ABAC) and role-based access control (RBAC) to establish access rules and access permissions for IoT. The framework is validated via simulation to determine the price of gas consumption when executing smart contracts to retrieve attributes, roles and access rules between three smart contracts and provide the baseline value for future research references. Thus, this paper offers valuable insight into ongoing research on decentralized access control for IoT security to protect and secure IoT resources in the smart farming environment.
One of the most important inventions and innovative developments playing an important role in the business world today is blockchain technology.Blockchain technology can be defined as a peer-to-peer distributed ledger database that is verifiable by parties and cannot be permanently updated.The hereditary features like data integrity and immutability in Blockchain is to optimize the processing model in several domains, such as financial services, healthcare, educational system, IoT, supply chain and many more.A decentralized blockchain system in which products are anti-counterfeit and manufacturers can use this system to supply genuine products without managing directly operated stores.The main objective of this study is to present a detailed overview of the use of blockchain technology in supply chain management systems.The present study examines all the relevant research done in the field related to the application of blockchain technology in supply chain operations.
Automating industrial tasks has become critical for organizations due to the inefficiencies and risks associated with conventional procedures. The proliferation of connected devices and machines brings forth a range of security concerns, including data tampering and unauthorized access. Establishing confidential and trustworthy communication between these devices becomes particularly difficult as they rely on the open channel of the Internet. Numerous established security measures, such as antivirus software, access control systems, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), have been identified in the literature as facing issues like centralized vulnerabilities, latency challenges, reliability issues, and single points of failure. As technology advances rapidly, the convergence of emerging technologies holds immense potential to revolutionize industrial automation. Among these promising technologies, blockchain and 6G stand out for their immense potential. With its decentralized and tamperproof nature, blockchain has disrupted various sectors, while 6G offers unprecedented connectivity and lightning-fast data transfer speeds. Motivated by these developments, this paper explores the potential impact of integrating blockchain technology with 6G in industrial automation, paving the way for the future of smart factories and intelligent supply chains. Our proposed work aims to provide a holistic understanding of this emerging amalgamation’s key benefits, challenges, offered solutions, and prospects.
Sidra Tul Muntaha, Pavlos I. Lazaridis, Maryam Hafeez, Qasim Zeeshan Ahmed · 6 authors
Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) and network slicing are some of the principal concepts to realize the emerging applications in Beyond 5th Generation (B5G) and 6th Generation (6G) networks. The frequency spectrum remains scarce and underutilized, while the performance requirements in terms of data throughput and latency of the network tenants have diversified. DSA allows for the efficient utilization of spectrum resources, while network slicing aims to serve network users with highly distinctive service needs. Lack of incentivization, sharing of spectrum resources among multiple operators, and lack of trust between operators are some of the challenges faced by centralized DSA approaches. Similarly, secure network slice orchestration, slice-isolation, secure access to network resources, privacy of user sensitive data, assuring the provision of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), are some of the challenges in existing network slicing techniques. Blockchain due to its innate capabilities can be a promising technology to solve the key issues pertaining to current DSA and network slicing approaches. Blockchain through smart contracts, provides traceability of network resources, auditability and accountability of network operators and service providers. Smart contracts facilitate the automation of resource sharing and network slice orchestration, while ensuring that SLAs are met, and network operators are compensated. This paper first provides a comprehensive overview of the DSA concept, the existing DSA techniques, and the challenges posed by these techniques. This is followed by a detailed description of network slicing, its key elements and architecture, various network slicing parameters, existing network slicing techniques and their challenges. Then an in- depth review on blockchain, its working principle, factors that affect blockchain implementation, and a comparison of various open-source blockchain platforms that support smart contracts is presented. This discussion is summarized by presenting the state-of-the-art in the blockchain-enabled DSA and network slicing, challenges and trade-offs of these techniques, and the gaps and future directions in this research area. Finally, we conclude by providing some future research directions.
A blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties in an efficient, verifiable, and permanent way. Once recorded in a block, the transaction data cannot be altered retroactively. Moreover, smart contracts can be put in place to ensure that any new data added to the blockchain respects the terms of an agreement between the involved parties. As such, the blockchain becomes the single source of truth for all stakeholders in the system. These characteristics make blockchain technology especially useful in the context of Industry 4.0, distributed in nature, but with important requirements of trust and accountability among the large number of devices involved in the collaboration. In this chapter, we will see concrete scenarios where cyber-physical systems (CPSs) can benefit from blockchain technology, especially focusing on how blockchain works in practice, and which are the design and architectural trade-offs we should keep in mind when adopting this technology both for the design and operation of CPSs.
Abla El Bekkali, Mohamed Essaaidi, Mohammed Boulmalf
A smart city is one that uses digital technologies and other means to improve the quality of life of its citizens and reduce the cost of municipal services. Smart cities primarily use IoT to collect and analyze data to interact directly with the city’s infrastructure and monitor city assets and community developments in real time to improve operational efficiency and proactively respond to potential problems and challenges. Today, cybersecurity is considered one of the main challenges facing smart cities. Over the past few years, the cybersecurity research community has devoted a great deal of attention to this challenge. Among the different technologies proposed to address this challenge, Blockchain appears to offer the security and data privacy needed to enhance smart cities security. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework and architecture based on Blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence to improve smart cities cybersecurity. For the sake of illustration of the proposed framework, simulation results are presented for a smart grid dataset from the UCI Machine Learning Repository, demonstrating its potential and efficiency to deal with cybersecurity challenges in smart cities.
Carlos Núñez‐Gómez, Martijn de Vos, Jérémie Decouchant, Johan Pouwelse · 6 authors
With the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, traditional resource orchestration mechanisms, executed on fog devices, encounter significant scalability, reliability and security challenges. To tackle these challenges, recent decentralized algorithms in Fog-IoT use Distributed Ledger Technologies to orchestrate resources and payments between peers. However, while distributed ledgers provide many desirable properties, their consensus mechanism introduces a performance bottleneck. This paper introduces Light-HIDRA, a consensus-less and decentralized resource orchestration system for Fog-IoT environments. At its core, Light-HIDRA uses Byzantine Reliable Broadcast (BRB) to coordinate actions without centralized control, therefore drastically reducing communication overhead and latency compared to consensus-based solutions. Light-HIDRA coordinates the scheduling and execution of workloads, and securely manages the payments that peers receive for dedicating resources to workloads. Light-HIDRA further increases performance and reduces overhead by grouping peers into distinct domains. We conduct an in-depth analysis of the protocol’s security properties, investigating its efficiency and robustness in diverse situations. We evaluate the performance of Light-HIDRA, highlighting its performance over HIDRA, a state-of-the-art baseline that uses smart contracts. Our experiments demonstrate that Light-HIDRA reduces the bandwidth usage by up to 57x, the latency of workload offloading by up to 142x, and shows superior throughput compared to HIDRA.
Service provisioning is of paramount importance as we are now heading for a world of integrated services giving rise to the next generation of service ecosystems. The huge number of service offerings that will be available for customers in future scenarios require a novel approach to service registry and discovery that lets customers choose those offerings that best match their preferences. One way to achieve this is to introduce the provider’s reputation, i.e., a quality indicator of the provisioned service, as an additional search criterion. Now, with blockchain technology in our hands, automated regulation of service-level agreements (SLAs) that capture the mutual agreements between all involved parties has regained momentum. In this article, we report our full-fledged work on the conception, design, and construction of a platform for SLA-minded service provisioning called PenChain. With our work, we demonstrate that penalty-aware SLAs of general services – if represented in a machine-readable logic and assisted by distributed ledger technology – are programmatically enforceable. We devise algorithms for ranking services in a search result taking into account the digitized values of the SLAs. We offer scenario-based evaluation of PenChain in the field of precision agriculture and the domain of automotive manufacturing. Furthermore, we examine the scalability and the data security of PenChain for precision agriculture.
In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a secure sensing data processing and logging system. The system is inspired and enabled by blockchain. In this system, a public blockchain is used as immutable data store to store the most critical data needed to secure the system. Furthermore, several innovative blockchain-inspired mechanisms have been incorporated into the system to provide additional security for the system’s operations. The first priority in securing sensing data processing and logging is admission control,i.e., only legitimate sensing data are accepted for processing and logging. This is achieved via a sensor identification and authentication mechanism. The second priority is to ensure that the logged data remain intact overtime. This is achieved by storing a small amount of data condensed from the raw sensing data on a public blockchain. A Merkel-tree based mechanism is devised to link the raw sensing data stored off-chain to the condensed data placed on public blockchain. This mechanism passes the data immutability property of a public blockchain to the raw sensing data stored off-chain. Third, the raw sensing data stored off-chain are secured with a self-protection mechanism where the raw sensing data are grouped into chained blocks with a moderate amount of proof-of-work. This scheme prevents an adversary from making arbitrary changes to the logged data within a short period of time. Fourth, mechanisms are developed to facilitate the search of the condensed data placed on the public blockchain and the verification of the raw sensing data using the condensed data placed on the public blockchain. The system is implemented in Python except the graphical user interface, which is developed using C#. The functionality and feasibility of the system have been evaluated locally and with two public blockchain systems, one is the IOTA Shimmer test network, and the other is Ethereum.
Igor A. Kalmykov, Владимир Копытов, A A Olenev, Daniil Vyacheslavovich Dukhovnyj · 6 authors
The use of a satellite Internet systems (SIS) makes it possible to effectively support technologies such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This technology is especially relevant for oil and gas industry enterprises implementing the development of deposits located on the shelf of the Arctic Ocean. As the number of countries and companies engaged in the development of deposits in the Arctic Ocean increases, the number of groupings of low-orbit satellites increases as well. This can lead to a situation when an intruder satellite intercepts a control command and then imposes it on a receiver located on an unattended object. It is possible to reduce the effectiveness of such relay spoofing interference by using the satellite authentication protocol. The conducted studies have shown that authentication protocols with zero-knowledge proof have high cryptographic resistance to a satellite response being correctly picked up. However, they have a drawback. It is a significant time spent on determining the status of the satellite, which is caused by the fact that calculations are performed using a large module (128 or more digits). This disadvantage can be eliminated by using modular residue classes codes (MRCC).
Saminur Islam, Mohammad Jaminur Islam, Mahmud Hossain, Shahid Noor · 6 authors
Recently, Blockchain-based applications have become immensely popular because of limited reliance on a single entity, unlike a centralized system. However, reaching a consensus among blockchain networks is a challenging and vital aspect of blockchain-based applications. There are various types of blockchain networks for different kinds of application scenarios. Among all of them, the consensus algorithm is the most crucial part of reaching an agreement in the complex blockchain network. Over the years, researchers have focused on dealing with the challenges like distributed computing, storage, transaction speed, security, validity, interoperability, and many more. However, only some of them are appropriate for all domains. Therefore, this paper presents an extensive study of different types of consensus protocols used in existing blockchain solutions with the strength and limitations of each algorithm. We also provide an inherent comparison among different algorithms to understand consensus protocol selection better. Moreover, we investigate operational and interoperability issues in existing blockchain-based applications to understand challenges and provide recommendations for future developers.
The technology of distributed ledgers has the potential to transform a wide variety of different sectors by incorporating trust and transparency into the procedures of conducting transactions and exchanging data. In order to study the current status of research on blockchain-based distributed systems for trust and transparency, the objective of this literature review is to undertake a methodical analysis of research publications that have been published during the last five years. These articles were published in the preceding five years. This analysis is being conducted with the goal of determining the opportunities and challenges that may arise from the use of blockchain technology in a variety of sectors, including the healthcare industry, the management of supply chains, the provision of government services, and the financial sector. The publications that were reviewed provide evidence of both the breadth and complexity of the newly emerging field of study known as blockchain technology, as well as the ways in which blockchain-based distributed systems have the potential to improve features such as openness, accountability, and productivity in a range of settings. However, the papers also highlight the challenges associated with scalability, interoperability, regulation, and ethical considerations, as well as the necessity for additional research and engagement with stakeholder groups. This literature study, taken as a whole, offers helpful insights on the potential for blockchain technology to meet the growing need for accountability, traceability, and social responsibility in a range of settings. This finding also underscores the necessity of cross-disciplinary collaboration and the active participation of stakeholders in order to fully exploit the possibilities offered by blockchain technology.
Mohammad Maroufi, Reza Abdolee, Behzad Mozaffari Tazehkand, Seyed Amir Mortezavi
This paper introduces a lightweight Blockchain-based architecture for 5G-enabled Internet-of-Thing (IoT) networks that employs a low-complexity consensus algorithm suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices. By combining 5G technology with a lightweight Blockchain consensus algorithm, the proposed architecture guarantees high availability, real-time data delivery, security, reliability, and low-latency connectivity. Two transaction types are considered in this architecture, i.e., local and public. Local transactions are exchanged within devices located in the same Small Cell (SC) or Macro Cell (MC) private Blockchains, while public transactions exchange data among different MCs in the public Blockchain and store verified data in the distributed ledger. Performance evaluation reveals that the proposed architecture outperforms conventional 5G (without Blockchain) regarding security against data manipulation and fraud. The proposed architecture improves hashing and encryption protocols compared to conventional 5G but slightly reduces the data traffic rate and increases local transaction processing time. In contrast, the proposed architecture reduces the consensus processing time in the public Blockchain compared to Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) by about thirty percent due to adding a Distributed Trust Algorithm (DTA). We evaluate the proposed architecture’s performance against conventional 5G and PoET in terms of processing time and power consumption. The results indicate that the proposed architecture provides superior performance, and the DTA algorithm’s addition enhances the public transaction’s consensus processing time.
As smart grids advance rapidly, they are evolving along two primary trajectories: (1) digitalization through the incorporation of Internet of Things (IoT) technology and intelligent control, and (2) decentralization by leveraging small-scale distributed energy sources for control. However, these developments also introduce complexities in the functioning, management, and control of smart grids. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a transparent, secure, robust, transactive, and scalable framework for all stakeholders and operators. Blockchain technology emerges as a promising solution for this new smart grid paradigm, providing a range of features, including a distributed ledger, immutability, consensus, security, and automation. This article highlights the challenges in smart grid management, control, and operations, and discusses the potential of blockchain-based solutions to address these issues. It demonstrates that the adoption of blockchain can significantly enhance the overall functioning of the infrastructure by establishing a decentralized architecture without central governance.
Muhammad Nouman, U. Qasim, Hina Nasir, Abdullah M. Almasoud · 6 authors
In the proposed work, blockchain is implemented on the Base Stations (BSs) and Cluster Heads (CHs) to register the nodes using their credentials and also to tackle various security issues. Moreover, a Machine Learning (ML) classifier, termed as Histogram Gradient Boost (HGB), is employed on the BSs to classify the nodes as malicious or legitimate. In case, the node is found to be malicious, its registration is revoked from the network. Whereas, if a node is found to be legitimate, then its data is stored in an Interplanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS stores the data in the form of chunks and generates hash for the data, which is then stored in blockchain. In addition, Verifiable Byzantine Fault Tolerance (VBFT) is used instead of Proof of Work (PoW) to perform consensus and validate transactions. Also, extensive simulations are performed using the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) dataset, referred as WSN-DS. The proposed model is evaluated both on the original dataset and the balanced dataset. Furthermore, HGB is compared with other existing classifiers, Adaptive Boost (AdaBoost), Gradient Boost (GB), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Extreme Gradient Boost (XGB) and ridge, using different performance metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, micro-F1 score and macro-F1 score. The performance evaluation of HGB shows that it outperforms GB, AdaBoost, LDA, XGB and Ridge by 2-4%, 8-10%, 12-14%, 3-5% and 14-16%, respectively. Moreover, the results with balanced dataset are better than those with original dataset. Also, VBFT performs 20-30% better than PoW. Overall, the proposed model performs efficiently in terms of malicious node detection and secure data storage.
In this paper, we propose a certificate sharing system based on blockchain that gives students authority and control over their academic certificates. Our strategy involves developing blockchain-based NFT certifications that can be shared with institutions or employers using blockchain addresses. Students may access the data created by each individual institute in a single platform, filter the view of the relevant courses according to their requirements, and mint their certificate metadata as NFTs. This method provides accountability of access, comprehensive records that are permanently maintained in IPFS, and verifiable provenance for creating, distributing, and accessing certificates. It also makes it possible to share certificates more safely and efficiently. By incorporating trust factors through data provenance, our system provides a countermeasure against issues such as fake and duplicate certificates. It addresses the challenge of the traditional certificate verification processes, which are lengthy manual process. With this system, students can manage and validate their academic credentials from multiple institutions in one location while ensuring authenticity and confidentiality using digital signatures and hashing for data protection against unauthorized access. Overall, our suggested system ensures data safety, accountability, and confidentiality while offering a novel approach to certificate distribution.