Authors: REZVAN MAHMOUDIE, SAEED PARSA, AMIR MASOUD RAHMANI
Abstract: Blockchain (BC) has been used as a new solution to overcome security and privacy challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT). However, recent studies have indicated that the BC has a limited scalability and is computationally costly. Also, it has significant overhead and delay in the network, which is not suitable to the nature of IoT. This article aims at implementing BC in the IoT context for smart home management, as the integration of these two technologies ensures the IoT's security and privacy. Therefore, we proposed an overlay network in private BC to optimize its compatibility with IoT by increasing scalability and reducing network overhead and response delay. Devices with high-level resources (Computer, Mobile, etc.), named block managers, establish a two-dimensional overlay network that helps block managers to communicate with their neighbors' block managers. Their communication aims at managing the BC according to the trust and voting mechanism. Trust, encouragement, and penalties help the blocks to ensure accurate transactions. Our proposed private BC model provides the first solution for managing IoT transactions in overlay networks. Our experimental results showed that the proposed mechanism reduces packet overhead and delay in service delivery while increasing the BC's scalability in comparison to the state-of-the-art BC models. By limiting the number of effective block managers in voting, we could significantly reduce the average approval time of the blocks.
Keywords: Blockchain, internet of things, overlay network, privacy, security, block manager
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