IoT, WoT, and Blockchain Technologies
Ali A. Abed · 2021
Summary form only given, as follows. Blockchain on the Internet of Things (IoT) is a novel technology that acts with decentralized, distributed, public and real-time ledger to store transactions among IoT nodes. A blockchain is a series of blocks, each block is linked to its previous blocks. Every block has the cryptographic hash code, previous block hash, and its data. The transactions in BC are the basic units that are used to transfer data between IoT nodes. The IoT nodes are different kind of physical but smart devices with embedded sensors, actuators, programs and able to communicate with other IoT nodes. The role of BC in IoT is to provide a procedure to process secured records of data through IoT nodes. BC is a secured technology that can be used publicly and openly. IoT requires this kind of technology to allow secure communication among IoT nodes in heterogeneous environment. The transactions in BC could be traced and explored through anyone who are authenticated to communicate within the IoT. The BC in IoT may help to improve the communication security. In the vision of the IoT, an increasing number of embedded devices of all sorts (e.g., sensors, mobile phones, cameras, smart meters, smart cars, traffic lights, smart home appliances, etc.) are now capable of communicating and sharing data over the Internet. Another trend is viewing IoT as Web of Things (WoT) where the open Web standards are supported for information sharing and device interoperation. By penetrating smart things into existing Web, the conventional web services are enriched with physical world services. This WoT vision enables a new way of narrowing the barrier between virtual and physical worlds. In this presentation, we elaborate the architecture and some key enabling technologies of IoT, WoT, and blockchain. Some pioneer open platforms and prototypes will also be displayed. The most recent research results and projects are summarized. Finally, we point out some open challenging issues that may be faced by research community.