With the drive to create a decentralized digital economy, Web 3.0 has become a cornerstone of digital transformation, developed on the basis of computing-force networking, distributed data storage, and blockchain. With the rapid realization of quantum devices, Web 3.0 is being developed in parallel with the deployment of quantum cloud computing and quantum Internet. In this regard, quantum computing first disrupts the original cryptographic systems that protect data security while reshaping modern cryptography with the advantages of quantum computing and communication. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a quantum blockchain-driven Web 3.0 framework that provides information-theoretic security for decentralized data transferring and payment transactions. First, we present the framework of quantum blockchain-driven Web 3.0 with future-proof security during the transmission of data and transaction information. Next, we discuss the potential applications and challenges of implementing quantum blockchain in Web 3.0. Finally, we describe a use case for quantum non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and propose a quantum deep learning-based optimal auction for NFT trading to maximize the achievable revenue for sufficient liquidity in Web 3.0. In this way, the proposed framework can achieve proven security and sustainability for the next-generation decentralized digital society.
Satisfying the world’s rapidly increasing demands in energy via the optimized management of available resources is becoming one of the most important research trends worldwide. When it comes to energy, it is very important to talk about decentralization, security, traceability and transparency. Thus, over the last few years, numerous research works have presented blockchain technology as the best novel business platform enabling a secure, transparent and tamper-proof energy management solution. In this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) using the PRISMA framework of the different existing research studies related to the use of the blockchain technology in the energy sector, published between 2008 and 2021. We identified a total of 769 primary studies after intensive manual analysis and filtering, which we thoroughly assessed using various criteria to address six main research questions that covered the blockchain types, applications and platforms in the energy sector, the energy source types for which blockchain platforms are implemented, the emergent technologies that are combined to blockchain solutions, and the types of consensuses used in energy blockchains. Based on the collected survey data, we built a database to categorize the existing research works, identify research trends, and highlight knowledge gaps and potential areas for additional field study.
To enable precision medicine and remote patient monitoring, internet of healthcare things (IoHT) has gained significant interest as a promising technique. With the widespread use of IoHT, nonetheless, privacy infringements such as IoHT data leakage have raised serious public concerns. On the other side, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies have demonstrated great potential for enhancing trustworthiness and privacy protection for IoHT systems. In this survey, a holistic review of existing blockchain-based IoHT systems is conducted to indicate the feasibility of combining blockchain and IoHT in privacy protection. In addition, various types of privacy challenges in IoHT are identified by examining general data protection regulation (GDPR). More importantly, an associated study of cutting-edge privacy-preserving techniques for the identified IoHT privacy challenges is presented. Finally, several challenges in four promising research areas for blockchain-based IoHT systems are pointed out, with the intent of motivating researchers working in these fields to develop possible solutions.
Houshyar Honar Pajooh, Serge Demidenko, Saad Aslam, Muhammad Harris
Ubiquitous computing turns into a reality with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) adopted to connect massive numbers of smart and autonomous devices for various applications. 6G-enabled IoT technology provides a platform for information collection and processing at high speed and with low latency. However, there are still issues that need to be addressed in an extended connectivity environment, particularly the security and privacy domain challenges. In addition, the traditional centralized architecture is often unable to address problems associated with access control management, interoperability of different devices, the possible existence of a single point of failure, and extensive computational overhead. Considering the evolution of decentralized access control mechanisms, it is necessary to provide robust security and privacy in various IoT-enabled industrial applications. The emergence of blockchain technology has changed the way information is shared. Blockchain can establish trust in a secure and distributed platform while eliminating the need for third-party authorities. We believe the coalition of 6G-enabled IoT and blockchain can potentially address many problems. This paper is dedicated to discussing the advantages, challenges, and future research directions of integrating 6G-enabled IoT and blockchain technology for various applications such as smart homes, smart cities, healthcare, supply chain, vehicle automation, etc.
In the Internet of Things (IoT) system, data leakage can easily occur due to the differing security of edge devices and the different processing methods of data in the transmission process. Blockchain technology has the advantages of good non-tamperability, decentralization, de-trust, openness, and transparency, and it can protect data security on the Internet of Things. This research integrates the means by which data flow can be combined with blockchain technology to prevent privacy leakage throughout the entire transportation process from sender to receiver. Through a keyword search of the last five years, 94 related papers in Web of Science and IEEE Xplore were extracted and the complex papers and frameworks explained using a reconstruction graph. The data processing process is divided into five modules: data encryption, data access control, data expansion, data storage, and data visualization. A total of 11 methods combining blockchain technology to process IoT data were summarized. The blockchain application technology in the IoT field was summarized objectively and comprehensively, and a new perspective for studying IoT data flow was given.
One of the key responsibilities of the Public Key Infrastructure is revocation management. Additionally, the security of any Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) depends on it. Today's revocation methods are susceptible to a single point of failure when network traffic rises due to the growth in the quantity and size of networks as well as the adoption of new paradigms like the Internet of Things and the use of the web. The author uses the strength and resiliency of blockchain to overcome these issues and present a productive decentralized certificate revocation management and status verification system. The author adds a field that specifies which distribution point the certificate will belong to in the event that it is revoked using the certificate structure extension field. Then, the author carries out a thorough assessment of our plan using performance indicators like execution time and data consumption to show that it can fulfill the demands with high effectiveness and little expense. Additionally, the author contrasts the effectiveness of our strategy with two of the most widely-used revocation approaches, namely the Certificate Revocation List and the Online Certificate Status Protocol. The data collected demonstrate that our suggested strategy works better than the existing scheme.
Abdullah Ayub Khan, Asif Ali Laghari, Muhammad Shafiq, Shafique Ahmed Awan · 5 authors
Due to globalization and advances in network technology, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with edge computing has gained increasingly more attention over the last few years. The technology provides a new paradigm to design interconnected distributed nodes in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted vehicle networks for communications between vehicles in smart cities. The process hierarchy of the current UAV-assisted networks is also becoming more multifaceted as more vehicles are connected, requiring accessing and exchanging information, performing tasks, and updating information securely. This poses serious issues and limitations to centralized UAV-assisted vehicle networks, directly affecting computing-intensive tasks and data offloading. This paper bridges these gaps by providing a novel, transparent, and secure lifecycle for UAV-assisted distributed vehicle communication using blockchain hyperledger technology. A modular infrastructure for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) is designed and ‘B-UV2X’, a blockchain hyperledger fabric-enabled distributed permissioned network-based consortium structure, is proposed. The participating nodes of the vehicle are interconnected with others in the chain of smart cities and exchange different information such as movement, etc., preserving operational logs on the blockchain-enabled immutable ledger. This automates IoV transactions over the proposed UAV-assisted vehicle-enabled consortium network with doppler spread. Thus, for this purpose, there are four different chain codes that are designed and deployed for IoV registration, adding new transactions, updating the ledger, monitoring resource management, and customized multi-consensus of proof-of-work. For lightweight IoV authentication, B-UV2X uses a two-way verification method with the defined hyperledger fabric consensus mechanism. Transaction protection from acquisition to deliverance and storage uses the NuCypher threshold proxy re-encryption mechanism. Simulation results for the proposed B-UV2X show a reduction in network consumption by 12.17% compared to a centralized network system, an increase in security features of up to 9.76%, and a reduction of 7.93% in the computational load for computed log storage.
Bello Musa Yakubu, Majid Iqbal Khan, Pattarasinee Bhattarakosol
The dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) servers are forms of an Internet of Things (IoT) address management server (IoTAMS) that gives network configuration settings to newly connected hosts. Administrators of a network may save time by setting DHCP servers instead of every network node. However, the absence of a more robust authentication method for DHCP servers makes hosts susceptible to attacks since neither the server nor the users are able to check the other’s authenticity during DHCP connections. These concerns result in both internal and external threats to the system that have the potential to impair network services. Among these threats are malicious DHCP servers and DHCP starvation. This paper aims to provide a novel approach for tackling these issues and protect the DHCP protocol. The proposed model uses the Diffie–Hellman key exchange mechanism, the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP), a one-way hash function, blockchain technology, and a smart contract. In addition, registration and validation processes provide support for the proposed model in combating DHCP risks for both internal and external system threats. Results from this study show that the proposed model has an average of 21.1% more resistance to a growing number of adversaries than the benchmark models, thus revealing that the model is better suited for the security of IoT address management servers in smart homes, thereby enhancing resilience against related threats and the success of IP address management.
The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) has become widely popular in the past decade as it has huge prospects for the economy due to its applicability in various use cases such as environmental monitoring, disaster management, localization, defense, underwater exploration, and so on. However, each of these use cases poses specific challenges with respect to security, privacy, transparency, and traceability, which can be addressed by the integration of blockchain with the IoUT. Blockchain is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that consists of series of blocks chained up in chronological order in a distributed network. In this paper, we present a first-of-its-kind survey on the integration of blockchain with the IoUT. This paper initially discusses the blockchain technology and the IoUT and points out the benefits of integrating blockchain technology with IoUT systems. An overview of various applications, the respective challenges, and the possible future directions of blockchain-enabled IoUT systems is also presented in this survey, and finally, the work sheds light on the critical aspects of IoUT systems and will enable researchers to address the challenges using blockchain technology.
Compared with traditional paper-based medical records, electronic health records (EHRs) are widely used because of their efficiency, security, and reducing data redundancy. However, EHRs still manifest poor interoperability and privacy issues are unresolved. As a distributed ledger protocol composed of encrypted blocks of data organized in chains, blockchain represents a potential tool to solve the shortcomings of EHRs in terms of interoperability and privacy. In this paper, we define EHRs and blockchain technology and introduce several classic schemes based on blockchain technology to strengthen EHR interoperability and privacy protection. We then review ongoing challenges in the areas of data management efficiency, fairness of access, and trust in the systems. In this commentary, we suggest ongoing research needs for health informatics, data sciences, and ethics to establish EHRs based on blockchain technology. Blockchain-based EHR schemes must address the potential inequality of healthcare resources, the huge carbon footprint of computational needs, and potential distrust of health providers and patients that may ensue with wider use of blockchain technology.
Continuously generated volumes of health data make healthcare a data-intensive domain. This data needs to be collected, stored, and shared among different healthcare actors for various purposes, such as reporting, analysis, collaborative research, and personalized healthcare services. However, the existing data storage and exchange solutions in the healthcare domain exhibit several challenges related to, e.g., data security, patient privacy, and interoperability. Recently, the industry and research community turned its focus to the possible use of blockchain technology to solve some of these challenges in the healthcare domain. The blockchain technology along with the support from smart contracts is considered a salient facilitator for secure and efficient health data sharing. This is due to its unique features, such as decentralization, trustlessness, immutability, traceability, and transparency. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art efforts that envision the use of blockchain-based solutions in the healthcare domain. To this end, we introduce a systematic framework for classifying and analyzing such systems. The framework consists of classification in several dimensions: interactions between healthcare entities, functional components of healthcare storage systems, challenges in the healthcare domain that can be overcome by using the blockchain technology, and benefits for healthcare storage systems derived from the fundamental features of the technology. When analyzing over 40 systems and solutions proposed in the state-of-the-art, we perform their rigorous placement by identifying the exact scope of each solution and mapping it to the above taxonomies of interactions, functional components, challenges, and benefits. We additionally provide an extensive discussion of compliance with privacy-related regulations of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in EU, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Following the results of the analysis, we have outlined a number of important research gaps and future directions yet to be addressed.
Miguel Pincheira, Elena Donini, Massimo Vecchio, Salil S. Kanhere
The data economy is based on data and information sharing and tremendously impacts society as it facilitates innovative collaborations and decision-making strategies. Nonetheless, most dataset-sharing solutions rely on a centralized authority that rules data ownership, availability, and accessibility. Recent works have explored the integration of distributed storage and blockchain to enhance decentralization, data access, and smart contracts for automating the interactions between actors and data. However, current solutions propose a smart contract design limiting the system's scalability in terms of actors and shared datasets. Furthermore, little is known about the performance of these architectures when using distributed storage instead of centralized storage approaches. This paper proposes a scalable architecture called DeBlock for data sharing in a trusted way among unreliable actors. The architecture integrates a public blockchain that provides a transparent record of datasets and interactions, with a distributed storage for data storage in a completely decentralized way. Furthermore, the architecture provides a smart-contract design for a transparent catalog of datasets, actors, and interactions with efficient search and retrieval capabilities. To assess the system's feasibility, robustness, and scalability, we implement a prototype using the Ethereum blockchain and leveraging two decentralized storage protocols, Swarm and IPFS. We evaluate the performance of our proposed system in different scenarios (e.g., varying the amount and size of the shared datasets). Our results demonstrate that our proposal outperforms benchmarks in gas consumption, latency, and resource requirements, especially when increasing the number of actors and shared datasets.
In the Social Internet of Things (SIoT), trust refers to the decision-making process used by the trustor (Service Requesters (SRs) or Service Consumers (SCs)) to decide whether or not to entrust the trustee (Service Providers (SPs)) with specific services. Trust is the key factor in SIoT domain. The designing of a two-way, two-stage parameterized feedback-based, service-driven, attacks-resistant trust and reputation system for SIoT accompanied by a penalty mechanism for dishonest SPs and SRs is our main contribution that mitigates the trust-related issues occurring during service provisioning and service acquisition amongst various entities (SPs or SRs) and enhances trust amongst them. Our proposed methodology examines a SP’s local trust, global trust, and reputation by taking into account “Social Trust” and “Quality of Service (QoS)” factors”. Two—Stage Parameterized feedback” is incorporated in our proposed strategy to better manage “intention” and “ability” of SRs and provides early identification of suspicious SRs. This feature compels SRs to act honestly and rate the corresponding SPs in a more accurate way. Our recommended paradigm sorts SPs into three SP status lists (White List, Grey List, and Black List) based on reputation values where each list has a threshold with respect to the maximum service fee that can be charged. SPs in White List charge the most per service. SPs in other lists have a lower selection probability. Every feedback updates the SP’s trust and reputation value. Sorting SPs increases resistance against On Off Attack, Discriminatory Attack, Opportunistic Service Attack, and Selective Behavior Attacks. SPs must operate honestly and offer the complete scope of stated services since their reputation value relies on all their global trust values (Tglobal) for various services. Service requests may be accepted or denied by SPs. “Temporarily banned” SRs can only request unblocked services. SRs lose all privileges once on a “permanently banned” list. If local and global trust values differ by more than the threshold, the SR is banned. Our method also provides resistance against Bad Mouthing Attack, Ballot Stuffing Attack. Good Mouthing Attack/Self—Propagating Attack. Experiments indicate our trust and reputation management system recognizes and bans fraudulent SRs. “Dishonest SPs” are “blacklisted,” which affects their reputation, trust, and service charges.
<abstract><p>The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) significantly impacts our healthcare system because it allows us to track and verify patient medical data before storing it in the cloud for future use. A rapidly expanding platform like IoMT requires high security to keep all data safe. The patient's prescription history and other sensitive information must be encrypted and managed with great care. Nevertheless, it is challenging to determine what data uses are acceptable while protecting patient privacy and security. Understanding the limits of current technologies and envisioning future research paths is crucial for establishing a safe and reliable data environment. An untrustworthy person can communicate with a trustworthy person via blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger that allows for end-to-end communication. Therefore, this research suggests that the healthcare industry with blockchain-integrated cyber-security based on artificial intelligence (BICS-AI) in medical care to preserve medical-related things. Blockchain applications have the potential to consistently identify the most severe, potentially life-threatening mistakes in the medical field. The use of blockchain for decentralized data protection helps to protect patient health records from compromise. With the help of an access control provider (ACP), here came up with a lightweight solution that addresses this issue by allowing the delegating of security operations. Medical data from IoMT and integrated devices can be collected and stored securely and distributed using a conventional in-depth approach combined with blockchain, making it suitable for healthcare professionals such as nursing homes, hospitals, and the healthcare industry where data exchange is required. The research findings indicate that the suggested system is viable and has a 94.84$ \% $ security rate, a security performance of 96.4$ \% $, a success rate of 89.9$ \% $, and a 5.1$ \% $ latency rate compared to traditional methods.</p></abstract>
Proof-of-Work (PoW) was the first blockchain consensus protocol discovered, followed by Proof-of-Stake and others. The disadvantage of the PoW is that it requires high energy consumption compared to other consensus protocols. Based on this weakness, some researchers proposed a lightweight blockchain technology, a modified blockchain that has a simplified algorithm but does not reduce the security factor. This lightweight blockchain is suitable for applications requiring data reliability but with limited computing resources, such as Internet of Things devices. This paper discussed and modified the SimBlock simulator as one of the existing blockchain simulators. It has a visualization tool to look further into the propagation transition of the block. Unfortunately, the existing PoW consensus on the SimBlock simulator is unable to pinpoint the actual hash computation method. Therefore, the hashing process in the SimBlock simulator was modified by including the difficulty level for finding the hash target. The purpose of including the difficulty level was to determine how long it takes to create a block. By knowing the time needed, a recommendation could be obtained for the most suitable difficulty level for a lightweight blockchain and its implementation with IoT devices. There are two options of approaches to the difficulty level referred to in this paper; finding the number of zeros that appear sequentially and are in front of a hash value (leading zero) and finding the number of zeros that appear arbitrarily (count zero). For example, the first difficulty level on a leading-zero quest has the same meaning as searching for a leading zero, the second level of difficulty is the search for the two leading zeros, etc. The block generation time on a blockchain network using the PoW consensus highly depends on the difficulty level. Block generation time and resource utility have been analyzed and compared with other blockchain simulators and existing networks, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. The modified SimBlock simulator was tested in this experiment using 100-600 nodes, with the expected result of creating 100-1000 blocks. Based on the experiments, creating a block using leading zeros as the hash target for the first to fourth difficulty levels took less than 1 s, whereas when using count zeros (zero-count) as the target hash, it took less than 1 s for the first to fifteenth difficulty levels. Using leading zeros took approximately 237.4 s at difficulty level 7, while count-zero took approximately 633.8 s at difficulty level 19. The experiment was not continued at the next difficulty level because it required a longer compilation time. With the modifications made, the creation of a block on a blockchain network using the PoW consensus can be clearly seen. The difficulty level added to the simulator can also provide information for determining the difficulty level to be implemented on the lightweight blockchain.
Certificates in either hard or soft copies are common documents in our day-to-day activities. However, they are vulnerable to be tampered and inefficiencies exist in the current verification systems. Blockchain technology is considered a feasible solution to protect certificates from being forged and simplify the current verification systems. As an attempt to understand the potential of blockchain for digital certificates in a holistic view, this research aims to conduct a deep analysis of the benefits of blockchain for digital certificates using a multiple case study approach. A benefits analysis model is developed for mapping the benefits of an information system comprehensively and systematically covering benefits in technical, individual, organisational and societal dimensions. Although contextual variations exist, some common benefits are identified such as reduced costs of verification, improved decision making and planning, attracting new customers and supporting business growth. Lastly, future research opportunities in this research field are identified.
Gousia Habib, Sparsh Sharma, Sara Ibrahim, Imtiaz Ahmad · 6 authors
The real-world use cases of blockchain technology, such as faster cross-border payments, identity management, smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, and supply chain–blockchain technology are here to stay and have become the next innovation, just like the Internet. There have been attempts to formulate digital money, but they have not been successful due to security and trust issues. However, blockchain needs no central authority, and its operations are controlled by the people who use it. Furthermore, it cannot be altered or forged, resulting in massive market hype and demand. Blockchain has moved past cryptocurrency and discovered implementations in other real-life applications; this is where we can expect blockchain technology to be simplified and not remain a complex concept. Blockchain technology’s desirable characteristics are decentralization, integrity, immutability, verification, fault tolerance, anonymity, audibility, and transparency. We first conduct a thorough analysis of blockchain technology in this paper, paying particular attention to its evolution, applications and benefits, the specifics of cryptography in terms of public key cryptography, and the challenges of blockchain in distributed transaction ledgers, as well as the extensive list of blockchain applications in the financial transaction system. This paper presents a detailed review of blockchain technology, the critical challenges faced, and its applications in different fields. Blockchain in the transaction system is explained in detail with a summary of different cryptocurrencies. Some of the suggested solutions are given in the overall study of the paper.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Over the last decade, data sharing has become eminent in each aspect of the daily routine chores of industries and research alike. Traditionally, all data sharing platform depend on trusted third parties (TTP), owing to which they lack trust, security, immutability and transparency. But, with the advent of blockchain technology, the data sharing has got a whole new dimensionality. Blockchain is a distributed and decentralized ledger that records the source of a digital resources. The secure features of blockchain have helped it gain popularity and application in a variety of domains including sustainable manufacturing. It can aid in customer and product tracking, supply chain, quality checks, etc. Blockchain can further strengthen how products can be designed, engineered, manufactured, dispatched and tracked in the revolutionized Industry 4.0 initiative. All these activities involve sharing of voluminous data. Hence, this paper presents an efficient data-sharing system which takes the advantage of the transparency as well as the security provided by a blockchain. AnonChain (Anonymous Chain) is a file sharing platform that integrates Inter Planetary File Sharing (IPFS) with the blockchain technology to provide secure and anonymous file sharing.
Digitalization has become a crucial part of healthcare 4.0 by transforming systems such as electronic health records (EHR), electronic medical records (EMR), and electronic personal medical records (ePHR). Healthcare 4.0 is derived from industry 4.0 and aims to enhance collaboration, virtualization, coherence, and convergence, which helps transform modern healthcare into more personalized and predictive. Healthcare 4.0 also aims to develop digital enablers which will support coordination among various stakeholders and seamless information flow in the patient journey towards wellbeing. These systems enhance patient care through the timely sharing of patient data across different providers globally. Timely sharing helps, but it also makes the electronic system vulnerable to alteration and breaches. In healthcare, blockchain application is widely used in various areas, such as health information exchange, pharmaceutical counterfeit, clinical trials, health supply chain management, patient data management, insurance claims, and product recall in case of adverse events. This research paper aims to identify how blockchain technology can help enhance the privacy and security of electronic health record systems. This paper discusses various blockchain-based systems, which provide a more efficient and secure option than client-server architecture-based traditional EHR systems.
Advancement in the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing has escalated the number of connected edge devices in a smart city environment. Having billions more devices has contributed to security concerns, and an attack-proof authentication mechanism is the need of the hour to sustain the IoT environment. Securing all devices could be a huge task and require lots of computational power, and can be a bottleneck for devices with fewer computational resources. To improve the authentication mechanism, many researchers have proposed decentralized applications such as blockchain technology for securing fog and IoT environments. Ethereum is considered a popular blockchain platform and is used by researchers to implement the authentication mechanism due to its programable smart contract. In this research, we proposed a secure authentication mechanism with improved performance. Neo blockchain is a platform that has properties that can provide improved security and faster execution. The research utilizes the intrinsic properties of Neo blockchain to develop a secure authentication mechanism. The proposed authentication mechanism is compared with the existing algorithms and shows that the proposed mechanism is 20 to 90 per cent faster in execution time and has over 30 to 70 per cent decrease in registration and authentication when compared to existing methods.
Abstract The industry 4.0 revolution leads by technologies such as distributed digital ledgers, big data processing techniques, automation, and the internet of things (IoT). The interest in the industrial internet of things (IIoT) has progressed rapidly with huge internet areas such as research, academics, and industries. Through a decentralised and distributed approach blockchain and IIoT ensure maximum security. In the distributed approach, every block is chained together with each other. This paper presented a survey on industry 4.0 and blockchain‐based systems. The integration of blockchain, IoT devices, and industry 4.0 provides security, transparency, and scalability to the system. The paper also addresses many types of cyber attacks and possible solutions for blockchain based industrial internet of things (BIIoT) systems.
Yehia Ibrahim Alzoubi, Asif Qumer Gill, Alok Mishra
The fog computing concept was proposed to help cloud computing for the data processing of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, fog computing faces several challenges such as security, privacy, and storage. One way to address these challenges is to integrate blockchain with fog computing. There are several applications of blockchain-fog computing integration that have been proposed, recently, due to their lucrative benefits such as enhancing security and privacy. There is a need to systematically review and synthesize the literature on this topic of blockchain-fog computing integration. The purposes of integrating blockchain and fog computing were determined using a systematic literature review approach and tailored search criteria established from the research questions. In this research, 181 relevant papers were found and reviewed. The results showed that the authors proposed the combination of blockchain and fog computing for several purposes such as security, privacy, access control, and trust management. A lack of standards and laws may make it difficult for blockchain and fog computing to be integrated in the future, particularly in light of newly developed technologies like quantum computing and artificial intelligence. The findings of this paper serve as a resource for researchers and practitioners of blockchain-fog computing integration for future research and designs.
Shadab Alam, Mohammed Shuaib, Sadaf Ahmad, Dushantha Nalin K. Jayakody · 7 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) has radically transformed how patient information and healthcare monitoring are monitored and recorded and has revolutionized the area by ensuring regular 24 × 7 tracking without costly and restricted human resources and with a low mistake probability. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a subsection of the Internet of things (IoT) that uses medical equipment as things or nodes to enable cost-effective and efficient patient monitoring and recording. The IoMT can cope with a wide range of problems, including observing patients in hospitals, monitoring patients in their homes, and assisting consulting physicians and nurses in monitoring health conditions at regular intervals and issuing warning signals if emergency care is necessary. EEG signals, electrocardiograms (ECGs), blood sugar levels, blood pressure levels, and other conditions can be examined. In crucial situations, quick and real-time analysis is essential, and failure to provide careful attention can be fatal. A cloud-based IoT platform cannot handle these latency-sensitive conditions. Fog computing (FC) is a novel paradigm for assigning, processing, and storing resources to IoT devices with limited resources. Where substantial processing power or storage is required, all nodes in a fog computing scheme can delegate their jobs to local fog nodes rather than forwarding them to the cloud module at a greater distance. Identifying potential security risks and putting in place adequate security measures are critical. This work aims to examine a blockchain (BC) as a potential tool for mitigating the impact of these difficulties in conjunction with fog computing. This research shows that blockchain can overcome fog computing’s privacy and security concerns. It also discusses blockchain’s issues and limitations from the perspective of fog computing (FC) and the IoMT.