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. 2021 Jan 7;21(2):359.
doi: 10.3390/s21020359.

Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain for Securing the Edge Internet of Things

Houshyar Honar Pajooh  1 , Mohammad Rashid  1 , Fakhrul Alam  1 , Serge Demidenko  1   2
Affiliations

Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain for Securing the Edge Internet of Things

Houshyar Honar Pajooh et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Providing security and privacy to the Internet of Things (IoT) networks while achieving it with minimum performance requirements is an open research challenge. Blockchain technology, as a distributed and decentralized ledger, is a potential solution to tackle the limitations of the current peer-to-peer IoT networks. This paper presents the development of an integrated IoT system implementing the permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) to secure the edge computing devices by employing a local authentication process. In addition, the proposed model provides traceability for the data generated by the IoT devices. The presented solution also addresses the IoT systems' scalability challenges, the processing power and storage issues of the IoT edge devices in the blockchain network. A set of built-in queries is leveraged by smart-contracts technology to define the rules and conditions. The paper validates the performance of the proposed model with practical implementation by measuring performance metrics such as transaction throughput and latency, resource consumption, and network use. The results show 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.

Keywords: Internet of Things; data provenance; edge computing; hyperledger fabric; security and privacy; smart contract.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of the RAFT consensus protocol and block creation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Conceptual framework of the integrated IoT blockchain platform.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Local authentication flow.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Blockchain-based edge services.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Proposed HLF network transaction flow.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Ledger implementation flow.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Experimental setup and system under test.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Effects of transaction sizes on the throughput and average response times in Desktop setup.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Effects of transaction sizes on the throughput and average response times in Raspberry Pi setup.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Latency for all ChainCode operation.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Latency vs. transaction sending rate.
Figure 12
Figure 12
CPU and memory use for varying data sizes for peer process in the Desktop setup.
Figure 13
Figure 13
CPU and memory use for varying data sizes for client process in the Desktop setup.
Figure 14
Figure 14
CPU and memory use for varying data sizes for peer process in RPi setup.
Figure 15
Figure 15
CPU and memory for varying data sizes for client process in RPi setup.
Figure 16
Figure 16
Network use for peer process with no transactions.
Figure 17
Figure 17
Network use vs. load sizes with/without external storage.
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