Hany F. Atlam, Muhammad Ajmal Azad, Ahmed G. Alzahrani, Gary Wills
The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a new technology that enables both virtual and physical objects to be connected and communicate with each other, and produce new digitized services that improve our quality of life. The IoT system provides several advantages, however, the current centralized architecture introduces numerous issues involving a single point of failure, security, privacy, transparency, and data integrity. These challenges are an obstacle in the way of the future developments of IoT applications. Moving the IoT into one of the distributed ledger technologies may be the correct choice to resolve these issues. Among the common and popular types of distributed ledger technologies is the blockchain. Integrating the IoT with blockchain technology can bring countless benefits. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of integrating the IoT system with blockchain technology. After providing the basics of the IoT system and blockchain technology, a thorough review of integrating the blockchain with the IoT system is presented by highlighting benefits of the integration and how the blockchain can resolve the issues of the IoT system. Then, the blockchain as a service for the IoT is presented to show how various features of blockchain technology can be implemented as a service for various IoT applications. This is followed by discussing the impact of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) on both IoT and blockchain. In the end, future research directions of IoT with blockchain are presented.
Mohammad Tabrez Quasim, Alaa Abd Elhamid Radwan, Goram Mufareh M Alshmrani, Mohammad Meraj
In terms of access, data processing, monitoring and healthcare, the world's health systems experience significant transformations. The advances in data capturing and connected technology are expected to produce about 2314 exabytes of health care data for 2020 [1]. Cyber criminals put a lot of effort for gaining access of healthcare knowledge. This challenge is expected to carry the cybersecurity market to about 27.1 billion dollars in the year 2026 [2]. The blockchain technology will help to form a centralized repository for data collection in clinical experiments. This article suggests a secure system using blockchain to make sure the protection of electronic healthcare records (EHR). The framework includes sensors, Interne of things, databases and other computing resources. This framework for securing EHR will improve the security, privacy of EHR as compared to traditional healthcare system.
Manzoor Ahmed Hashmani, Aisha Zahid Junejo, Abdullah Alabdulatif, Syed Hasan Adil
Block-chain is one of the latest trends of tech world. The technology was introduced with Bitcoin and is being highly experimented for various cryptocurrencies ever since. However, with recent advancements in the technology, the research community and industries have started focusing on its applicability in other various areas such as healthcare, business, logistics, education and many more. Consequently, the research carried out in this paper investigates the use of Block-chain technology in education sector. Over the years, the use of technology in education have helped in improving the accessibility and quality of education using touch screens, Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, e-classrooms etc. However, there are certain areas in education that need further consideration such as keeping track of students and student related records and transcripts, reduction in manual and paperwork and more. This is where Block-chain is predicted to play a significant role. In this paper, the potential applications of Block-chain for tracing and tracking in education sector are discussed. The discussion is done by first presenting the existing issues in education sector. Further, using the tracking and tracing ability of the Block-chain, few solutions to the existing problems have been proposed. The proposal of solutions is followed by the challenges of integration of Block-chain technology in education sector. Finally, the paper concludes stating that Block-chain has a huge potential in revolutionizing the education sector if the existing challenges are overcome through research and experimentation.
Two major interconnectivity technologies that are present in the contemporary digital era, namely, BlockChain (BC) technology and IOTA are compared in this paper. After this, their characteristics shall be explained in addition to some significant applications which they have been utilized in to provide further context in a real-life setting. In the modern era, success and rise of bitcoin have proven the need as well as the value of blockchain technology. The demand for IOTA industry is increasing day by day. This requires looking for something completely different from the bitcoin as well as the solution for the technology of bitcoin in separated cryptocurrencies. After this, a conclusion shall be presented, which shall serve to summarize the paper as a means of comprehensively present it and synthesizing the gist of the entire paper to present a more nuanced and interconnected understanding of the paper. After this, recommendations shall be provided based on the information presented in the paper to act as a guide for other scholars for their research endeavors. Scholarly articles shall be used where necessary to provide backing and to link additional reference material.
Blockchain will increase supply chains' productivity and accountability, and have a positive effect on anything from warehousing to distribution to payment. To bridge the supply chain visibility gap, blockchain is being deployed because of its security features like immutability, tamper-resistant and hash proof. Blockchain integration with IoT increases the traceability and verifiability of the supply chain management and drastically eradicates the fraudulent activities including bribery, money laundering, forged checks, sanction violations, misrepresentation of goods and services. Blockchain can help to cross-check the verification, identification and authenticity of IoT devices to reduce the frequency and ramifications of fraud in supply chain management. The epidemic outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has disrupted many global supply chains. The Geneva-based World Economic Forum declared that SARS-CoV-2 exposed supply chain failures can be tackled by blockchain technology. This paper explores the modern methodologies of supply chain management with integration of blockchain and IoT.
Maliha Sultana, Afrida Hossain, Fabiha Laila, Kazi Abu Taher · 5 authors
BACKGROUND: Data security has been a critical topic of research and discussion since the onset of data sharing in e-health systems. Although digitalization of data has increased efficiency and speed, it has also made data vulnerable to cyber attacks. Medical records in particular seem to be the regular victims of hackers. Several data breach incidents throughout history have warranted the invention of security measures against these threats. Although various security procedures like firewalls, virtual private networks, encryption, etc are present, a mix of these approaches are required for maximum security in medical image and data sharing. METHODS: Relatively new, blockchain has become an effective tool for safeguarding sensitive information. However, to ensure overall protection of medical data (images), security measures have to be taken at each step, from the beginning, during and even after transmission of medical images which is ensured by zero trust security model. In this research, a number of studies that deal with these two concepts were studied and a decentralized and trustless framework was proposed by combining these two concepts for secured medical data and image transfer and storage. RESULTS: Research output suggested blockchain technology ensures data integrity by maintaining an audit trail of every transaction while zero trust principles make sure the medical data is encrypted and only authenticated users and devices interact with the network. Thus the proposed model solves a lot of vulnerabilities related to data security. CONCLUSIONS: A system to combat medical/health data vulnerabilities has been proposed. The system makes use of the immutability of blockchain, the additional security of zero trust principles, and the scalability of off chain data storage using Inter Planetary File Systems (IPFS). The adoption of this system suggests to enhance the security of medical or health data transmission.
Ricardo Carreño Aguilera, Miguel Patiño-Ortiz, Julián Patiño-Ortiz, ADAN ACOSTA BANDA
Blockchain technology apparently is a trivial innovation, but this technology has attracted huge investors in a very short period compared to other technologies, and it is still having a lot of potential applications. Smart contracts are making possible execution in an automated and safe way by using blockchain technology. Therefore, smart contracts are applied in this research for the expert system. This paper is about an expert system working with smart contracts and neural networks as the inference machine to decide on the sensors optimal distribution and taking actions when sensor readings are out of range: control lights, activating fire alarms, temperature alarms, etc. for all spaces (parks, schools, hospitals, etc.) in a smart city based on the needs, and likes of the expert system user. This expert system works using a blockchain structure on the EOSIO ecosystem with all data gathered by the sensors being saved in cloud online making internet of things environment and essential data saved in a blockchain node.
Nowadays vehicles are increasing on the road. Due to this, it is a challenge for society to manage traffic jams and road accidents all over the world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are very helpful to improve the performance of the overall road safety management system. AI is used for many real-world applications to make any system be a smart system. The Smart Road Traffic Management System (SRTMS) easily recognizes the influence occurs for random changes on road safety. The SRTMS detects the unsafe driving patterns as well as convey the information to the respective authorities. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a boon technology to observe human activities in real-time. IoT devices or nodes are composed of sensors that are commonly utilized to identify and reply to electrical and other signals. Currently, Blockchain (BC) is the most trending technology to automate transactions, which means sharing or exchange of information between the IoT devices or nodes. BC technology facilitates for sharing of information on the network is decentralized, secure, persistent, anonymity, suitability and trustworthy manner. With consensus algorithms and smart contracts, Blockchain holds to manage communication among nodes without the involvement of a third-party or intermediary body. Simultaneously, AI has the ability to offer intelligent and decision-making machines similar to human beings' minds. This paper proposes the SRTMS model for solving the road accident, traffic jam and disseminate the information to all stakeholders. This proposed model is a combination of most trending technologies such as AI, BC, and IoT. This paper proposes the SRTMS model for solving the road accident, traffic jam and disseminate the information to all stakeholders. This proposed model is a combination of most trending technologies such as AI, BC, and IoT.
The agricultural activity is considered to be the largest trade, as it is feeding more people. Though it is playing a vital role in economic development, the farmers who are producing the crops are not reaping abundant benefits from it. Precision agriculture systems equipped with advanced technologies allow farmers to increase their productivity in ecological friendly manner, but with minimum profit. Our traditional producer-consumer model makes farmers to hinge on the interagent or middleman to sell their goods to consumers, as they have fewer restrictions in selling the goods directly to consumers. This paper proposes Blockchain based Producer- Consumer Model (BPCM) which allows farmer to sell their goods directly to the consumers by preventing the interagents, to gain profit over farmers using smart contracts. It also resists the Sybil attack, by blocking interagent with multiple counterfeit identities to trade with consumers thereby increasing profit of the farmers.
Raja Wasim Ahmad, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman, Ibrar Yaqoob · 6 authors
<div><b>Objectives: </b>Telehealth and telemedicine systems aim to deliver remote healthcare services to mitigate the spread of COVID‐19. Also, they can help to manage scarce healthcare resources to control the massive burden of COVID-19 patients in hospitals. However, a large portion of today's telehealth and telemedicine systems are centralized and fall short of providing necessary information security and privacy, operational transparency, health records immutability, and traceability to detect frauds related to patients' insurance claims and physician credentials.</div><div><b>Methods: </b>The current study has explored the potential opportunities and adaptability challenges for blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine sector. It has explored the key role that blockchain technology can play to provide necessary information security and privacy, operational transparency, health records immutability, and traceability to detect frauds related to patients' insurance claims and physician credentials.</div><div><b>Results: </b>Blockchain technology can improve telehealth and telemedicine services by offering remote healthcare services in a manner that is decentralized, tamper-proof, transparent, traceable, reliable, trustful, and secure. It enables health professionals to accurately identify frauds related to physician educational credentials and medical testing kits commonly used for home-based diagnosis.</div><div><b>Conclusions: </b>Wide deployment of blockchain in telehealth and telemedicine technology is still in its infancy. Several challenges and research problems need to be resolved to enable the widespread adoption of blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine systems.</div><div> </div><div><br></div>
In this paper, the importance of blockchain technology have been discussed and the generations of blockchain (Bitcoin and Ethereum) have been compared provided different aspects. The blockchain is a technology which allows direct transaction without involving third party. Also, it offers many facilities like high translucency, high safety and security, improved trace-ability, greater proficient and transactions' speed, and reduced costs. Moreover, the cryptocurrencies provide advance security level. The basic purpose of this study is to highlight different aspects of Blockchain, Bitcoin and Ethereum and to show which cryptocurrency is better approach. The research contributes to show the impact of this technology in different fields and a comparison of bitcoin and ethereum is presented to analyze and furnish a decision regarding the best among them.
As the IoT is moving out of its early stages, it is emerging as an area of future internet. The evolving communication paradigm among cloud servers, Fog nodes and IoT devices are establishing a multilevel communication infrastructure. Fog provides a platform for IoT along with other services like networking, storage and computing. With the tremendous expansion of IoT, security threats also arise. These security hazards cannot be addressed by mere dependence on cloud model. In this paper we present an overview of security landscape of Fog computing, challenges, and, existing solutions. We outline major authentication issues in IoT, map their existing solutions and further tabulate Fog and IoT security loopholes. Furthermore this paper presents Blockchain, a decentralized distributed technology as one of the solutions for authentication issues in IoT. We tried to discuss the strength of Blockchain technology, work done in this field, its adoption in COVID-19 fight and tabulate various challenges in Blockchain technology. At last we present the Cell Tree architecture as another solution to address some of the security issues in IoT, outlined its advantages over Blockchain technology and tabulated some future course to stir some attempts in this area.
Blockchain has been proclaimed as one of the fastest growing technologies that have the potential to penetrate almost any industry available. In contrast to centralized systems of operations which have been mostly used till date, blockchain is based on a decentralized system. Through the use of decentralized database architecture, the procurement, authentication and maintenance of various operations are dependent upon the agreement of several parties instead of a single central authority. Blockchain not only makes operations transparent, but safer and faster also. Blockchain became popular with the emergence of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Since blockchain was first successfully applied for Bitcoin, people assumed these two to be synonyms of each other. Bitcoin transactions are managed using a distributed ledger on a peer-to-peer network that has anonymous, open and public access. Blockchain is the underlying technology which maintains the Bitcoin transaction ledger. Although blockchain technology emerged in financial sector with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoins and Ethereum, later it was realized that the blockchain technology can be adapted to be used in other domains also. Many years ago, the Internet changed the world by connecting digital devices worldwide, to have greater access to information. Similarly, blockchain is changing the way of doing business by proving more trust. The decentralized database architecture of blockchain provides more reliability for the maintenance of records and transactions. Any transaction, once recorded on a blockchain, cannot be altered. While the participants in a business network may not be able to trust each other, they can trust the blockchain. Businesses are benefited by blockchain in numerous ways, including quick access to information, immediate verification of transactions, reduced cost due to intermediaries, lowered risk due to fraud and tempering and reduced time for settling of disputes. Blockchain has attracted lot of researchers, in order to incorporate it into other emerging areas of technology like big data, the Internet of things and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the technological advancements that enable machines to act more intelligently. From drones to chatbots, AI enables machines to learn from a huge amount of data and apply that knowledge for efficient decision making. The focus of blockchain is to keep records accurate and to authenticate access, while AI is concerned with identifying patterns in the data stream for efficient decision making. Both these technologies are evolving and have prospects to be used in most of the industries. So, the merger of AI and blockchain would bring a revolutionary change worldwide. We could think of developing a decentralized system of database, where the machines could use these data to behave like humans. In this chapter, different aspects of AI are explored which can be improved by the use of robust blockchain architecture and is studied in the healthcare domain.
IoT-enabled applications, such as cloud manufacturing, guided water quality or air quality analysis, energy-conscious societal applications, and smart agricultural economics, are designed using a blend of high-end computing technologies, such as cloud, edge, and fog. Smart cities and governmental authorities keep a keen eye out for implementing IoT applications in an automated/decentralized approach with enhanced security measures so that tens of thousands of users, including entrepreneurs, are benefited. Existing IoT architectures are prone to energy inefficiency or resource underutilization problems due to the avoidance of apt technologies, such as serverless computing. This article proposes to set forth a serverless blockchain-enabled IoT architecture for societal applications. It explores the existing IoT architectures and pinpoints the advantages of applying serverless blockchains on IoT architectures. In addition, the proposed IoT architecture is illustrated with a specific use case of IoT societal applications namely air quality monitoring for smart cities (AQMS). This article discloses how air quality sensor data from defective industries were securely transacted to blockchain networks surpassing from the three levels of computing namely edge, fog, and cloud while utilizing serverless and server-oriented functions. In addition, this article exposes a list of the most potent serverless functions that assist AQMS IoT societal applications in detail. The IoT architecture, discussed in this article, will enable innovations and research works for IoT developers and researchers.
The objective of this research is to present the use of blockchain technology, the internet of things and fog computing to develop the potential of school management for smart education. By using the blockchain to record and store various pieces of information the organization will create credibility of administrative data in all departments and will reduce corruption. Data can be examined transparently, especially the financial and budget management and procurement of durable articles. Regarding the academic work and registration, it can be used to store learners' information, educational history, information of enrollment, academic results, and participation in the various activities of the educational institutions. It can create credibility in the management of information about content, learning and ability assessment results that students receive, and these can be recorded and stored in a blockchain that can be safely distributed. In addition, IoT and fog computing are integrated with AI systems embedded in various modern devices to be applied in environmental management and smart education management. IoT and fog computing help to support and respond quickly to questions about the use of all types of equipment for real-time management of executives, personnel and students, as well as creating new work and learning styles that can solve the situation of dangerous communicable diseases, such as the COVID-19 situation, or can solve emergency situations that will emerge in the future by working and studying from home. It can organize and share resources for work and learning together to access the organization from outside anywhere and at any time
The top priority of today's healthcare system is delivering medicine directly from the manufacturer to end-user. The pharmaceutical supply chain involves some level of commingling of a collection of stakeholders such as distributors, manufacturers, wholesalers, and customers. The biggest challenge associated with this supply chain is temperature monitoring as well as counterfeit drug prevention. Many drugs and vaccines remain viable within a specific range of temperatures. If exposed beyond this temperature range, the medicine no longer works as intended. In this paper, an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor-based blockchain framework is proposed that tracks and traces drugs as they pass slowly through the entire supply chain. On the one hand, these new technologies of blockchain and IoT sensors play an essential role in supply chain management. On the other hand, they also pose new challenges of security for resource-constrained IoT devices and blockchain scalability issues to handle this IoT sensor-based information. In this paper, our primary focus is on improving classic blockchain systems to make it suitable for IoT based supply chain management, and as a secondary focus, applying these new promising technologies to enable a viable smart healthcare ecosystem through a drug supply chain.
Pharmaceutical companies and other parties involved in drug supply chain face difficulties in meeting the traceability requirements from the regulatory bodies in different jurisdictions and in their capability to authenticate goods and drugs, which result in failure to combat major issues such as drugs counterfeiting. Counterfeit drugs are estimated for up to $200 billion per year in market value. This issue is contributing to the deaths of thousands of people due to use of ineffective drugs for serious illnesses. The drug supply chain is fragmented, and that prohibits establishing a global view on handling drugs from manufacturing until reaching the customer, with many loopholes that permit the introduction of counterfeit products that patients cannot authenticate. The recently introduced regulations in the US and the EU demand building interoperable electronic systems to enable tracing of drugs. Those regulations rely mainly on attaching a two-dimensional barcode for identification. However, applying these regulations and ensuring to have global view and perseverance of records and actions are not yet addressed. Blockchain’s immutability, provenance, and tokenization features provide a solution to address this and meet the requirements of authenticating drugs source and secure the supply chain. This chapter presents the use of non-fungible tokens to build a drug supply chain tool that enables identifiers creation, authentication of origin, transfer of ownership, and accessibility to drugs information by different stakeholders, including end customers.
The idea of blockchains technology (BT) in the Internet of Things (IoT) is to allow the physical things to trust in the transactions held within the IoT network. The BT is a distributed, decentralized, publicly shared its digital ledger and secured technology to eternally record the transactions across the shared database. The BT in IoT can be called Trust Machine to eliminate the intermediates and enables the physical things to trust with each other. This research evaluates the performance of BT in IoT. The simulated results are tested and can be used in the sustainable development of the integration of BT and IoT.
There has been revolutionary developments in the healthcare industry with the advancement of technology over the past years. Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Blockchain technology, lab-on-chip, non-invasive and minimally invasive surgeries and so on has simplified several dreadful diseases. The research as well as healthcare industry have been greatly impacted by these new technologies. Clinical exams and self-health tracking can be done by means of miniaturized healthcare sensors that are powered by IoT. They help in early diagnosis and treatment guidance by clinicians at remote locations without directly being in contact with the users. The access control structures and inconsistent security policies have been a hinderance in meeting the security requirements of these data. Blockchain based smart contracts and enterprise-distributed ledger framework can be used for monitoring the vital signs of the patient. This enables accessing medical information of patients globally at any time along with immutable and extensive history log. In comparison with the traditional patient monitoring system, the proposed system offers better monitoring, improved connectivity and enhanced data security.
Undoubtedly, the supply chain management (SCM) system is an important part of many organizations worldwide; over time, the technologies used to manage a supply chain ecosystem have, therefore, a great impact on businesses' effectiveness. Among others, numerous developments have been made that targeted to have robust supply chain systems to efficiently manage the growing demands of various supplies, considering the underlying requirements and main challenges such as scalability, specifically privacy and security, of various business networks. Internet of things (IoT) comes with a solution to manage a complex, scalable supply chain system, but to provide and attain enough security during information exchange, along with keeping the privacy of its users, is the great inherent challenge of IoT. To fulfill these limitations, this study designs and models a scaled IoT-based supply chain (IoT-SC) system, comprising several operations and participants, and deploys mechanisms to leverage the security, mainly confidentially, integrity, authentication (CIA), and a digital signature scheme to leverage potentially secured non-repudiation security service for the worst-case scenario, and to leverage privacy to keep users sensitive personal and location information protected against adversarial entities to the IoT-SC system. Indeed, a scaled IoT-SC system certainly opens new challenges to manage privacy and security while communicating. Therefore, in the IoT-SC system, each transaction writes from edge computing nodes to the IoT-SC controller is thoroughly examined to ensure the proposed solutions in bi-directional communication, and their robustness against adversarial behaviors. Future research works, employing blockchain and its integrations, are detailed as paces to accelerate the privacy and security of the IoT-SC system, for example, migrating IoT-centric computing to an immutable, decentralized platform.
Exploring the unique blockchain-internet of things (IoT) framework may be an attractive structure for enhancing communications efficiency in the 5G networks. The wireless communication would have been the largest research area that allows users to communicate with each other. Nowadays, high-speed, smart, efficient with many technologies, such as low power consumption, and so on, appear to be available to communicate with each other in today's globe. Throughout this framework, the expansion of fog features is enabled for physical objects within IoT. Several of the challenging issues in the field of wireless communications would be to build a new blockchain-based virtualization system across the IoT architecture. The main purpose of this framework is to connect blockchain technology to the IoT and fogging or maintains the IoT cryptography secured when transactions occurred. This strengthens blockchain and fog to build an effective IoT communication system. The recommended method is an important estimation of the extensive work.