The Importance of The "Internet of Things (iot)"

The importance of the “Internet of Things (IoT)” has gotten bigger and participates daily in the development of various technologies which demands an even bigger ability to exchange information and data. As such, data exchange platforms are emerging everyday in which service providers can search and exchange the data sets that they need. However some issues arise as centralized infrastructures do not convey trust as intermediaries for such exchange. Therefore, a decentralized solution backed by the blockchain using Ethereum and smart contracts to ensure transparent and decentralized exchange is expanded upon on this paper.

An essential aspect of the IoT world is having the collected and curated data applied to different fields due to its vastly advantageous cost but also optimised eco-system as a result of repeated data compilation which attracts many data exchange platforms who unfortunately cannot provide enough trust to guarantee transparency and seeing as a lack of trust kills the enthusiasm to share data the results are not as satisfying. Thus, a decentralized solution based-on blockchain would be a great solution.

Blockchain consists of data encryption and timestamps within a distributed system. Also, Ethereum intelligent contracts mixed with highly powered access control gives complete control over a party’s own data sharing permissions and therefore solves the cost and efficiency issues that central institutions have to deal with as well as gathers trust by all parties.

IoT data is collected by various parties who needs a platform to exchange it in order to improve its utilisation. Those platforms needs to gather trust are divided into three categories: Trusted Trading, Trusted Data Access and Trusted Privacy Preserve

Trusted Trading means the whole transaction process is recorded and can not be modified by anybody and its history is traceable by the public. There exists similar solutions already; however, seeing as they’re developed and maintained by third-party organizations which can not guarantee the transparency, they do not inspire trust. On the other hand, blockchain based system stores data in a distributed peer to peer network ensuring total trust as it cannot be altered and is accessible to anyone in complete transparency.

Trusted Data Access as current platforms require data be uploaded to a website or special cloud which makes the user unable to control who has access to it. The presented solution separates the data exchange into two parts: origin data exchange and data access right exchange. Origin data exchange is customized by the provider and it vetted on the blockchain which protects it by a consensus mechanism. Also, due to the nature of blockchain, it makes the access verification of permissions more convenient.

Trusted Privacy Preserve requirements mean that the data owner is able to protect his private information whereas on current platforms users need to verify their informations by sometimes linking very sensitive informations that could be hijacked and used for malicious intent which doesn’t guarantee security nor inspire trust and thus because the blockchain is as an anonymous network data owners only send informations without any sensitive private details which makes it much more secure and trusted.

The architecture for the IoT data exchange framework would be based on blockchain as a decentralized, trusted environment. It is divided into Data Layer, Network Layer, Management Layer and Interaction Layer

Data Layer which englobes two parts: the IoT data and the exchange data. The IoT data can be stored in various places as data source whereas the Exchange data which includes full descriptions of the data is stored in blockchain network. Parties are then able to choose the appropriate data access methods.

Network layer includes multiple networks including blockchain that allow access to the data and its transmission depending on the need. As blockchain network is composed of nodes of transactions, the nature of it guarantees a trusted and reliable tamper-resistant environment.

Management layer to manage the IoT data exchange in terms of security and permissions. Interaction Layer which basically translates as the interface for data exchange parties to communicate with each other. As far as major component designs are concerned and in order to automate the process, exchange management contracts include three types of protocols: access contracts, communication contracts and auto exchange contracts.

Firstly, access contracts work on a capability based access in order to manage data permission. Second, the communication contracts record the transaction for traceability. And finally, auto exchange contracts send out the data access if the requester is eligible to access it and fulfills all necessary requirements set out to control permissions. When accessed, it is possible to download the source data by different methods while everything is recorded.

To manage the data, using data contracts and classified search contracts ensures the most optimal results as when the data provider registers data, it is recorded with a full description and access method by which to get it and in the interest of improving efficiency, using hash table to classify it. Furthermore, user management contracts are for controlling the user’s security and permissions of the platform by using a nickname to communicate so to avoid privacy leaks as well as provide better privacy protection.

Lastly, the platform’s deployment would finally include a blockchain network composed of 10 Ethereum nodes of which 2 deployed in Aliyun servers for mining while the system environment of the node is the Ubuntu system. The web part would in turn be deployed on the Nginx server and run on the universal browsers on windows. All remaining nodes would be deployed in PC for IoT data exchange. The smart contracts would be developed in Solidity prior to being compiled. Relevant data will be stored wirelessly on sensor networks on remote databases. We would then achieve data permission exchange and verify access on the chain successfully and visualize transactions being recorded and stored. To summarise, we are proposing a blockchain backed solution to meet requirements for IoT data exchange. We would effectively develop a prototype system for IoT data exchange backed by Ethereum blockchain for maximum transparency while continuing to tweak and refine the process in order to standardise it and raise its efficiency.