Chapter 7
Conclusions and Future scope of
work
7.1 Conclusions
Conventional IoT system suffers from many limitations. One of the most promi-
nent among them is security. Since IoT devices are energy and resource con-
straint, implementation of computationally intensive security algorithms in this
infrastructure is a challenge. In this thesis, we have investigated the scope of
implementation of blockchain technology in IoT system, which is capable of of-
fering extensive security. Conventional Blockchain technology uses SHA-256 as
Hash Function in their PoW based consensus protocol, which is computation-
ally intensive. So, in the present investigation, we developed a Lightweight
Blockchain (LightBC) methodology, which uses SPONGENT based Hash func-
tion for the consensus protocol, whose computational load is much lesser than
that of SHA-256 hash. Similarly, we have proposed a lightweight authentication
scheme which will be implemented along with LightBC in the same IoT frame-
work. To adapt the whole proposed lightweight security along with authentica-
tion scheme in IoT infrastructure, we have designed an appropriate architecture
which is Fog based. We have incorporated a Fog layer where a Fog architectural
framework has been installed. This architecture has been named as FogIoT-LB
architecture. The incorporation of fog will help the computational process to im-
plement the security algorithms much faster with satisfactory efficiency. As a re-
sult, the whole system will be adaptable for secured real-time applications frame-
work. Fog computing installed at the edge will improve the performance of the
resource-constrained IoT network. The use of edge computing can help to reduce
some of the other challenges of IoT networks, such as availability, reliability, and
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scalability which is not a part of present research investigations undertaken in
this thesis. We have focused on only security aspect. To overcome the limitations
of conventional IoT system, we have proposed the FogIoT-LB architecture in our
present work along with the LBAuth and LightBC schemes to impose effective
security schemes. The proposed architecture and schemes are summarized as
follows:
1. FogIoT-LB: A lightweight Blockchain based Fog-IoT architecture: In this
chapter, an extensive literature survey of the current works on the develop-
ment of different IoT architectures were carried out, which focused on archi-
tectural advancement of IoT, in order to improve the various limitations of
the IoT ecosystem. The literature indicated that a successful Blockchain IoT
convergence will require not only a blockchain that has been customized
specifically for the needs of IoT, but also a new IoT based architecture. In
this regard, various Blockchain based IoT architectures were proposed to im-
prove the overall security, scalability and efficiency of the IoT ecosystem. In
this chapter, we proposed FogIoT-LB, a lightweight Blockchain based Fog-
IoT architecture to adapt our proposed Lightweight Blockchain based au-
thentication schemes effectively for the design of a secured real-time appli-
cation based IoT network infrastructure.
2. LBAuth: A proposed Lightweight authentication scheme: In this chapter,
a lightweight Authentication Scheme for Blockchain based Fog-IoT architec-
tures, LBAuth was proposed. The LBAuth scheme is a token based scheme
which employs ECC algorithm which is suitable for resource-constrained
devices due to the use of smaller keys length. The LBAuth scheme for
FogIoT-LB consists of the following steps: User Registration, Miner Regis-
tration, Device Registration, Gateway Registration, and Device Authentica-
tion. In FogIoT-LB, LBAuth provides decentralized authentication between
the end users and the blockchain-fog nodes in the Fog layer of the archi-
tecture. The proposed security protocol was tested using AVISPA/ HLPSL
tool by simulating the intruder behavior, searching for any insecure channel,
encryption efficiency, or weak authentication. The results of the AVISPA ver-
ification of the proposed LBAuth technique using OFMC and CL-AtSe in the
proposed model indicated that the scheme is ”SAFE”.
3. LightBC: A proposed Lightweight blockchain Scheme: In this chapter, a
lightweight Blockchain based methodology namely LightBC was proposed
where the Hash function is generated by a Lightweight SPONGENT tech-
nique. To evaluate the performance of LightBC, an emulation experimenta-
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Chapter 7. Conclusions and Future scope of work
tion was carried out on the BlockLite emulator. The resultant performance
analysis indicated that the use of SPONGENT succeeded in reducing the
block generation latency in Blockchain by 82%, when number of nodes used
were three and 87.363%, when number of nodes employed were increased
to 100. While performing experiment in AWS cloud environment, number
of nodes employed were gradually increased up to 8000. In this case also,
the block generation rate was found to be enhanced by 47.9%. From the
above experimental evaluations, it can be inferred that reduction of com-
putational time with respect to block creation was be achieved using the
proposed LightBC techniques. The emulation results indicate that the use
of SPONGENT hash function reduces the block generation latency in the
Blockchain significantly.
4. Performance Evaluation of LBAuth scheme and LightBC in FogIoT-LB
architecture: In this chapter, a hardware based testbed implementation of
FogIoT-LB architecture was experimented out. The LightBC blockchain and
the LBAuth authentication scheme were integrated and implemented on this
architecture. The analytical evaluation using system model of the entire pro-
posed architecture was also performed and compared to the Baseline and
testbed results to evaluate and compare their performance with respect to
Latency and Throughput. When compared to the BA, it was found that the
overall Latency of FogIoT-LB reduced by 76.92% for the case C1, and in case
C2 by 80.83%. In case C3, we observed that the rate at which blocks are
mined increased by 47.9% . (Here, C1, C2 and C3 indicates the number of
nodes used in the IoT system).
The performance evaluation of the testbed implementation of the architec-
ture was carried out with respect to the CPU utilization, Memory utiliza-
tion and network overhead. The performance metrics of each component
of the testbed were collected in order to evaluate the effect of implementa-
tion of the proposed lightweight Blockchain scheme, LightBC, and LBAuth
scheme on the entire architecture. It was observed that the CPU utiliza-
tion of FogIoT-LB for the component (M) reduced by 60%, (L) by 55% and
(V) by 61.53%, when compared to the baseline counterpart. Similarly, the
Network overhead for (M) decreased by 22.2%, (L) by 20%, (V) by 37.5%,
C(IN) by 20.27% and C(OUT) 37.5%. The Memory Utilization for the com-
ponent (M) reduced by 86.9%, (L) by 85.48%, (V) by 90.2% and that of the
cloud component, Total(R) reduced by 36.4%, Total(W) by 42.3%, Max(R)
by 42.8% and Max(W) by 57.9% when compared to the baseline. Here, L is
the Lightweight node, M is the miner node, V is the Virtual machine and C
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is the cloud component. The above mentioned performance analysis indi-
cate that in the overall implementation of FogIoT-LB, there was a significant
improvement in latency reduction and enhancement of throughput of the
system with respect to its BA counterpart. The results of the testbed im-
plementation also supported the above. Also, the testbed experimentaion
indicated that the use of lightweight cryptography not only improves per-
formance at the block level but also has an impact on the entire FogIoT-LB
architecture. The implementation of LBAuth scheme ensures the security of
the overall architecture. Lastly, an informal threat model summarizes the
security advantages of the FogIoT-LB architecture. The experimental results
satisfactorily confirm that the use of lightweight cryptographic schemes has
a very large positive impact on the Blockchain based IoT environment. This
will help to make the whole architecture a secured real-time applicable IoT
network system.
7.2 Future scope of work
Research in the field of Blockchain convergence with technologies such as IoT is
still in its infant stages. In this chapter, we highlighted further research oppor-
tunities in this domain which will also help in upgrading this work. This work
leaves ample scope for further development and investigations. Few of such re-
search opportunities are listed below:
1. Consensus algorithms: In this thesis, the proposed lightweight blockchain
is based on the PoW consensus algorithm. The proposed blockchain can be
further improved by using more efficient and scalable consensus algorithms
such as Proof of Stake(PoS).
2. Privacy preserving Blockchains: The execution of privacy aspect on this
architecture can also be improved further by using zero-knowledge schemes
such as zkSnarks.
3. Access Control: The access control and authentication mechanisms can also
be further improved.
4. Blockchain SDN Fog IoT: FogIoT-LB architecture can be further improved
by including SDN technological features in IoT framework. Many works
on Blockchain-SDN integration have been proposed for improved network
management.
5. Smart Contracts: Further research can be carried out with respect to incor-
poration of smart contract technology in the blockchain. The use of smart
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contracts can help improve the proposed architecture by automating certain
functionalities, such as the communication between the various devices and
the blockchain.
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