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Integrating the Internet of Things and Blockchain-Enabled Applications: Current Practices, Opportunities and Challenges

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2022) | Viewed by 11237

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Thomas K. Dasaklis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Management and Technology, University of Piraeus, 185 34 Piraeus, Greece
Interests: supply chain management; operational research; humanitarian logistics/disaster response; data analysis and blockchain technology
Dr. Fran Casino

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
Interests: pattern recognition; data management; privacy; cybersecurity; recommender systems; smart health; supply chain and blockchain
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Nikolaos P. Rachaniotis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Management & Technology, University of Piraeus, 18534 Piraeus, Greece
Interests: supply chain management; complex systems’ mathematical modelling; scheduling deteriorating jobs with time dependent parameters; humanitarian and epidemics logistics; decision support systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Internet of Things (IoT) applications and blockchain technology are driving Industry 4.0, and their integration seems almost mandatory for the years to come. Various weaknesses of IoT-related applications such as security vulnerabilities, data privacy and confidentiality issues could be tackled by the non-repudiable and forensics-by-design nature of blockchain technology. Arguably, blockchain-enabled applications could serve as a trusted environment for intra- and intersystem IoT communications and foster the development of fine-grained access control mechanisms of IoT data and services. Other benefits of integrating blockchain and IoT applications, particularly through smart contracts, include data integrity, forensics and chain-of-custody for IoT devices and sound identity management schemes.

Integrating, however, IoT sensors and blockchain-enabled applications might be a daunting task, especially when considering that such integration should occur within current enterprise resource planning (ERP) or cloud-based systems widely applied in all domains of global business and industry. The advent of 5G technologies also creates new challenges for successfully integrating IoT and blockchain. In particular, 5G-enabled IoT applications call for high data rates, network scalability and a massive number of device connectivity, technical requirements that challenge current blockchain platforms’ scalability features. Additionally, lack of interoperability and standardization heavily affect blockchain platforms’ potential to be fully integrated with IoT-related applications.

In this Special Issue of Sensors, we invite submissions focusing on the symbiotic relationship and integration potential of IoT-related applications and blockchain technology. We welcome submissions that offer important technical, conceptual and empirical insights into how IoT and blockchain could be successfully integrated within current ERP or cloud-based systems, particularly by tackling the various technical, security, operational and regulatory issues prevalent in today’s business context. Of particular interest are papers focusing on integrating blockchain and IoT in specific sectors such as industrial manufacturing, logistics, finance, health, energy, etc.

Dr. Thomas K. Dasaklis
Dr. Fran Casino
Dr. Rachaniotis Nikolaos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

 
 
 

Keywords

  • Development and implementation of integrated IoT and blockchain architectures
  • Security and privacy aspects of IoT and blockchain integration
  • 5G-enabled IoT applications and blockchain integration
  • Fog computing and IoT–blockchain integration
  • IoT-related industrial automation and blockchain integration
  • Blockchain-enabled access control mechanisms for IoT Big Data
  • Reliable and secure system design of IoT and blockchain-related architectures
  • Data interoperability and governance in IoT and blockchain-related architectures
  • Scalability issues of IoT and blockchain architectures
  • Real-world case studies relevant to IoT and blockchain integration approaches
  • Critical success factors for integrating blockchain and IoT
  • Conceptual research uncovering the barriers, drivers and concepts associated with integrating IoT and blockchain
 
 
 

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 1884 KiB  
Article
Decentralized Machine Autonomy for Manufacturing Servitization
by Matevž Pustišek, Min Chen, Andrej Kos and Anton Kos
Sensors 2022, 22(1), 338; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22010338 - 03 Jan 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2105
Abstract
Blockchain ecosystems are rapidly maturing and meeting the needs of business environments (e.g., industry, manufacturing, and robotics). The decentralized approaches in industries enable novel business concepts, such as machine autonomy and servitization of manufacturing environments. Introducing the distributed ledger technology principles into the [...] Read more.
Blockchain ecosystems are rapidly maturing and meeting the needs of business environments (e.g., industry, manufacturing, and robotics). The decentralized approaches in industries enable novel business concepts, such as machine autonomy and servitization of manufacturing environments. Introducing the distributed ledger technology principles into the machine sharing and servitization economy faces several challenges, and the integration opens new interesting research questions. Our research focuses on data and event models and secure upgradeable smart contract platforms for machine servitization. Our research indicates that with the proposed approaches, we can efficiently separate on- and off-chain data and assure scalability of the DApp without compromising the trust. We demonstrate that the secure upgradeable smart contract platform, which was adapted for machine servitization, supports the business workflow and, at the same time, assures common identification and authorization of all the participants in the system, including people, devices, and legal entities. We present a hybrid decentralized application (DApp) for the servitization of 3D printing. The solution can be used for or easily adapted to other manufacturing domains. It comprises a modular, upgradeable smart contract platform and off-chain machine, customer and web management, and monitoring interfaces. We pay special attention to the data and event models during the design, which are fundamental for the hybrid data storage and DApp architecture and the responsiveness of off-chain interfaces. The smart contract platform uses a proxy contract to control the access of smart contracts and role-based access control in function calls for blockchain users. We deploy and evaluate the DApp in a consortium blockchain network for performance and privacy. All the actors in the solution, including the machines, are identified by their blockchain accounts and are compeers. Our solution thus facilitates integration with the traditional information-communication systems in terms of the hybrid architectures and security standards for smart contract design comparable to those in traditional software engineering. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrating the Internet of Things and Blockchain-Enabled Applications: Current Practices, Opportunities and Challenges)
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28 pages, 2470 KiB  
Article
Towards Secure, Decentralised, and Privacy Friendly Forensic Analysis of Vehicular Data
by Lydia Negka and Georgios Spathoulas
Sensors 2021, 21(21), 6981; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21216981 - 21 Oct 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1632
Abstract
The automotive industry has been transformed through technological progress during the past decade. Vehicles are equipped with multiple computing devices that offer safety, driving assistance, or multimedia services. Despite these advancements, when an incident occurs, such as a car crash, the involved parties [...] Read more.
The automotive industry has been transformed through technological progress during the past decade. Vehicles are equipped with multiple computing devices that offer safety, driving assistance, or multimedia services. Despite these advancements, when an incident occurs, such as a car crash, the involved parties often do not take advantage of the technological capabilities of modern vehicles and attempt to assign liability for the incident to a specific vehicle based upon witness statements. In this paper, we propose a secure, decentralized, blockchain-based platform that can be employed to store encrypted position and velocity values for vehicles in a smart city environment. Such data can be decrypted when the need arises, either through the vehicle driver’s consent or through the consensus of different authorities. The proposed platform also offers an automated way to resolve disputes between involved parties. A simulation has been conducted upon a mobility traffic dataset for a typical day in the city of Cologne to assess the applicability of the proposed methodology to real-world scenarios and the infrastructure requirements that such an application would have. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrating the Internet of Things and Blockchain-Enabled Applications: Current Practices, Opportunities and Challenges)
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22 pages, 3587 KiB  
Article
Blockchain-IoT Sensor (BIoTS): A Solution to IoT-Ecosystems Security Issues
by Carlos Gonzalez-Amarillo, Cristian Cardenas-Garcia , Miguel Mendoza-Moreno , Gustavo Ramirez-Gonzalez and Juan Carlos Corrales
Sensors 2021, 21(13), 4388; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21134388 - 26 Jun 2021
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3311
Abstract
Sensor devices that act in the IoT architecture perception layer are characterized by low data processing and storage capacity. These reduced capabilities make the system ubiquitous and lightweight, but considerably reduce its security. The IoT-based Food Traceability Systems (FTS), aimed at ensuring food [...] Read more.
Sensor devices that act in the IoT architecture perception layer are characterized by low data processing and storage capacity. These reduced capabilities make the system ubiquitous and lightweight, but considerably reduce its security. The IoT-based Food Traceability Systems (FTS), aimed at ensuring food safety and quality, serve as a motivating scenario for BIoTS development and deployment; therefore, security challenges and gaps related with data integrity are analyzed from this perspective. This paper proposes the BIoTS hardware design that contains some modules built-in VHDL (SHA-256, PoW, and SD-Memory) and other peripheral electronic devices to provide capabilities to the perception layer by implementing the blockchain architecture’s security requirements in an IoT device. The proposed hardware is implemented on FPGA Altera DE0-Nano. BIoTS can participate as a miner in the blockchain network through Smart Contracts and solve security issues related to data integrity and data traceability in an Blockchain-IoT system. Blockchain algorithms implemented in IoT hardware opens a path to IoT devices’ security and ensures participation in data validation inside a food certification process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrating the Internet of Things and Blockchain-Enabled Applications: Current Practices, Opportunities and Challenges)
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18 pages, 373 KiB  
Article
Beacons and Blockchains in the Mobile Gaming Ecosystem: A Feasibility Analysis
by Iakovos Pittaras, Nikos Fotiou, Vasilios A. Siris and George C. Polyzos
Sensors 2021, 21(3), 862; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21030862 - 28 Jan 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3159
Abstract
We explore the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), such as blockchains, in mobile gaming, focusing on ecosystem expansion and diversification, customer attraction and retention, exploitation of context sensitive and personalized advertisements, and improved monetization of in-game [...] Read more.
We explore the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), such as blockchains, in mobile gaming, focusing on ecosystem expansion and diversification, customer attraction and retention, exploitation of context sensitive and personalized advertisements, and improved monetization of in-game assets. We evaluate the cost and transaction delay of DLTs in a location-based mobile game ecosystem using two types of blockchains (permissioned and permissionless or public), based on defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Our evaluation shows the advantages of using both types of blockchains as well as interledger technologies that combine them. Permissioned blockchains enable high performance, e.g., in terms of throughput and delay, and low cost, while permissionless (public) blockchains, through their transparency, immutability, and openness, support trust and facilitate interactions among unrelated parties. Finally, we show that the combination of IoT devices and DLTs in mobile gaming offers new business opportunities and enables innovative business models for both traditional mobile gaming companies and other participants in the ecosystem, e.g., game players, cafes, malls, and similar establishments, advertising companies, and independent programmers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrating the Internet of Things and Blockchain-Enabled Applications: Current Practices, Opportunities and Challenges)
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