Improved Layered Architecture: Integration of IoT with Blockchain for Increased Security and Scalability
Muhammad Jahangir, Ming Jie Lee, Ban-Hoe Kwan, Tariq Kamal, Tong-Yuen Chai, Wing Son Loh · 2024
Most of the existing Internet of Things (IoT) applications are built upon the conventional three-layered architecture that possesses several issues in terms of security, privacy and scalability. In this paper, we propose a five-layer architecture to mitigate the issues faced by the three-layered IoT applications. In particular, two layers: (i) data-link layer and (ii) IoT-Blockchaln layer were introduced. The data-link layer authenticates the legitimate device during the data transmission; while the IoT-Blockchain utilizes the distributed storage to prevent the data from being tampered. To testify the performance of the proposed method in terms of publishing time, experiments were conducted based on two setups: (i) single node setup and (ii) dual node setup. The results suggested the proposed method is highly scalable where the single node setup required an average of 9.4 seconds and dual node setup required 8.66 seconds. Future research will explore various network configurations and the integration of the Internet of Things Application (IOTA), a feeless and lightweight blockchain, to further optimize scalability and efficiency.