Massive Data Storage Solution for IoT Devices Using Blockchain Technologies

Sensors (Basel). 2023 Feb 1;23(3):1570. doi: 10.3390/s23031570.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept involves connecting devices to the internet and forming a network of objects that can collect information from the environment without human intervention. Although the IoT concept offers some advantages, it also has some issues that are associated with cyber security risks, such as the lack of detection of malicious wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes, lack of fault tolerance, weak authorization, and authentication of nodes, and the insecure management of received data from IoT devices. Considering the cybersecurity issues of IoT devices, there is an urgent need of finding new solutions that can increase the security level of WSNs. One issue that needs attention is the secure management and data storage for IoT devices. Most of the current solutions are based on systems that operate in a centralized manner, ecosystems that are easy to tamper with and provide no records regarding the traceability of the data collected from the sensors. In this paper, we propose an architecture based on blockchain technology for securing and managing data collected from IoT devices. By implementing blockchain technology, we provide a distributed data storage architecture, thus eliminating the need for a centralized network topology using blockchain advantages such as immutability, decentralization, distributivity, enhanced security, transparency, instant traceability, and increased efficiency through automation. From the obtained results, the proposed architecture ensures a high level of performance and can be used as a scalable, massive data storage solution for IoT devices using blockchain technologies. New WSN communication protocols can be easily enrolled in our data storage blockchain architecture without the need for retrofitting, as our system does not depend on any specific communication protocol and can be applied to any IoT application.

Keywords: Internet of Things; blockchain; consensus mechanisms; data storage; secure data management; wireless sensor networks.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the project Integrated Center for Research, Development, and Innovation in Advanced Materials, Nanotechnologies, and Distributed Systems for Fabrication and Control (MANSiD), Sectoral Operational Program for Increase of the Economic Competitiveness co-funded from the European Regional Development Fund, under Contract 671/9 April 2015 and in part by project “Interdisciplinary Cloud and Big Data Center at Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava”, POC/398/1/1, 343/390019, co-founded by the European Union.