Blockchain for secured IoT and D2D applications over 5G cellular networks : a thesis by publications presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer and Electronics Engineering, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Author's Declaration: "In accordance with Sensors, SpringerOpen, and IEEE’s copyright policy, this thesis contains the accepted and published version of each manuscript as the final version. Consequently, the content is identical to the published versions."The Internet of things (IoT) is in continuous development with ever-growing popularity. It brings significant benefits through enabling humans and the physical world to interact using various technologies from small sensors to cloud computing. IoT devices and networks are appealing targets of various cyber attacks and can be hampered by malicious intervening attackers if the IoT is not appropriately protected. However, IoT security and privacy remain a major challenge due to characteristics of the IoT, such as heterogeneity, scalability, nature of the data, and operation in open environments. Moreover, many existing cloud-based solutions for IoT security rely on central remote servers over vulnerable Internet connections. The decentralized and distributed nature of blockchain technology has attracted significant attention as a suitable solution to tackle the security and privacy concerns of the IoT and device-to-device (D2D) communication. This thesis explores the possible adoption of blockchain technology to address the security and privacy challenges of the IoT under the 5G cellular system. This thesis makes four novel contributions. First, a Multi-layer Blockchain Security (MBS) model is proposed to protect IoT networks while simplifying the implementation of blockchain technology. The concept of clustering is utilized to facilitate multi-layer architecture deployment and increase scalability. The K-unknown clusters are formed within the IoT network by applying a hybrid Evolutionary Computation Algorithm using Simulated Annealing (SA) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) to structure the overlay nodes. The open-source Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) Blockchain platform is deployed for the proposed model development. Base stations adopt a global blockchain approach to communicate with each other securely. The quantitative arguments demonstrate that the proposed clustering algorithm performs well when compared to the earlier reported methods. The proposed lightweight blockchain model is also better suited to balance network latency and throughput compared to a traditional global blockchain. Next, a model is proposed to integrate IoT systems and blockchain by implementing the permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric. The security of the edge computing devices is provided by employing a local authentication process. A lightweight mutual authentication and authorization solution is proposed to ensure the security of tiny IoT devices within the ecosystem. In addition, the proposed model provides traceability for the data generated by the IoT devices. The performance of the proposed model is validated with practical implementation by measuring performance metrics such as transaction throughput and latency, resource consumption, and network use. The results indicate that the proposed platform with the HLF implementation is promising for the security of resource-constrained IoT devices and is scalable for deployment in various IoT scenarios. Despite the increasing development of blockchain platforms, there is still no comprehensive method for adopting blockchain technology on IoT systems due to the blockchain's limited capability to process substantial transaction requests from a massive number of IoT devices. The Fabric comprises various components such as smart contracts, peers, endorsers, validators, committers, and Orderers. A comprehensive empirical model is proposed that measures HLF's performance and identifies potential performance bottlenecks to better meet blockchain-based IoT applications' requirements. The implementation of HLF on distributed large-scale IoT systems is proposed. The performance of the HLF is evaluated in terms of throughput, latency, network sizes, scalability, and the number of peers serviceable by the platform. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework can provide a detailed and real-time performance evaluation of blockchain systems for large-scale IoT applications. The diversity and the sheer increase in the number of connected IoT devices have brought significant concerns about storing and protecting the large IoT data volume. Dependencies of the centralized server solution impose significant trust issues and make it vulnerable to security risks. A layer-based distributed data storage design and implementation of a blockchain-enabled large-scale IoT system is proposed to mitigate these challenges by using the HLF platform for distributed ledger solutions. The need for a centralized server and third-party auditor is eliminated by leveraging HLF peers who perform transaction verification and records audits in a big data system with the help of blockchain technology. The HLF blockchain facilitates storing the lightweight verification tags on the blockchain ledger. In contrast, the actual metadata is stored in the off-chain big data system to reduce the communication overheads and enhance data integrity. Finally, experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of throughput, latency, communication, and computation costs. The results indicate the feasibility of the proposed solution to retrieve and store the provenance of large-scale IoT data within the big data ecosystem using the HLF blockchain

IoTLogBlock: Recording Off-line Transactions of Low-Power IoT Devices Using a Blockchain

For any distributed system, and especially for the\ua0Internet of Things, recording interactions between devices is\ua0essential. At first glance, blockchains seem to be suitable for\ua0storing these interactions, as they allow multiple parties to share\ua0a distributed ledger. However, at a closer look, blockchains require heavy computations, large memory capacity, and alwayson communication to the cloud; these are three properties that\ua0are challenging for IoT devices with limited resources.In this paper, we present IoTLogBlock to address these challenges. IoTLogBlock connects resource-constrained IoT devices\ua0to the blockchain, and it consists of three building blocks jointly\ua0enabling recording transactions: a lightweight contract signing\ua0protocol, a blockchain network, and a smart contract. The\ua0contract signing protocol allows devices to interact locally to\ua0perform transactions, even if no communication to the cloud\ua0and the blockchain exists at that moment. At a later time, devices\ua0forward the stored transactions to the blockchain, where a smart\ua0contract ultimately verifies the transactions.We evaluate our design on low-power devices and quantify\ua0the performance in terms of memory, computation, and energy\ua0consumption. Our results show that a constrained device can\ua0create and sign a transaction within 3 s on average. Finally, we\ua0expose the devices to network scenarios with edge connections\ua0ranging from 10 s to over 2 h

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

A security-and quality-aware system architecture for Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is characterized, at the system level, by high diversity with respect to enabling technologies and supported services. IoT also assumes to deal with a huge amount of heterogeneous data generated by devices, transmitted by the underpinning infrastructure and processed to support value-added services. In order to provide users with valuable output, the IoT architecture should guarantee the suitability and trustworthiness of the processed data. This is a major requirement of such systems in order to guarantee robustness and reliability at the service level. In this paper, we introduce a novel IoT architecture able to support security, privacy and data quality guarantees, thereby effectively boosting the diffusion of IoT services

Understanding the use of emerging technologies in the agrifood industry: a case study

The research aim is to understand how emerging technologies, and in particular the blockchain, affect business organization in the agrifood industry. In particular, it explores how decentration, distribution and digitalization ledged could be integrated in the precision agriculture in order to allow organizations to share information with stakeholder, to improve relationship with customers, and to develop a network with other firms. After, reviewing the IS literature on emerging technologies in agri-food industry, with peculiar reference to the blockchain technology for precision agriculture, it is analyzed the case of BioLu, a small innovative Italian farm located in Campa- nia Region. Our results shown how emerging technologies support precision ag- riculture through data collection and exploitation for entrepreneur (e.g., decision- making) and consumers (e.g., food traceability), rather than agrifood supply chain