Towards Blockchain Network Platform for IoT Data Integrity and Scalability

Abstract

Decentralised technology backed by blockchain has gained popularity in recent years, as it secures autonomous ecosystems without the need for a central authority. The blockchain concept originated in the financial domain using cryptocurrency but has been applied to a variety of industries over the last few years. In the era of Industry 4.0, most enterprises leverage automation by using Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Despite the numerous applications of blockchain across industries, significant latency in the consensus algorithm in blockchain hinders its adoption among businesses using IoT technology. A number of studies have addressed the obstacles of transaction processing performance and system scalability, mostly based on a public blockchain. However, the approaches still involve centralised components and thus fail to fully utilise decentralisation. Here, a private blockchain-based IoT data integration platform is proposed to achieve data integrity and system scalability. Along with a lightweight IoT gateway, instead of any other additional middleware, the process and the system configuration are streamlined. By using Hyperledger Fabric, the design is validated, and the proposed architecture outperforms other conventional models in IoT data processing. Thus, decentralisation in IoT environments is achieved.