Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computer Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet

Survey paper

A Survey on Role of Blockchain for IoT: Applications and Technical Aspects

Shikha Mathur a , Anshuman Kalla b ,∗, Gürkan Gür c , Manoj Kumar Bohra a ,∗,
Madhusanka Liyanage d
a Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India
b Department of Computer Engineering, CGPIT, Uka Tarsadia University, Bardoli, Gujarat, India
c
Institute of Applied Information Technology (InIT), Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland
d
School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In recent times, IoT has emerged as a new paradigm for the interconnection of heterogeneous, resource-
Blockchain constrained, and communication-capable smart devices. It has been anticipated as a key enabler for various
Smart contracts domains of applications such as health care, automotive, agriculture, industrial operations, automation, energy,
DLT
and the next generation of living. However, the current IoT applications face significant challenges in terms
Internet of Things (IoT)
of the huge amount of collected data, intensive data exchange, security, privacy, centralized processing, and
interoperability. To mitigate many of these issues, blockchain has been identified as a promising innovative
technology. Blockchain, in conjunction with smart contracts, has received significant attention both from the
industry and academia and offers features such as irreversibility, non-repudiation, proof of provenance, fault
tolerance, pseudonymity, decentralized operations and decision-making, and distributed ledger. The integration
of blockchain with IoT requires essential insights concerning the application areas, scalability, security,
privacy, data college and storage, performance, and governance. Thus, this paper intends to expound on the
opportunities and key aspects of using blockchain in the IoT landscape. Specifically, this paper surveys the
utilization of blockchain for various IoT applications. Besides, the paper distinguishes different technical aspects
and presents the associated research challenges. At last, future research directions are discussed depending on
the lessons learned.

1. Introduction refrigerator [5]. Since then, the world has witnessed enormous growth
in IoT-driven devices and applications.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects called The evolution from the early days of the Internet to the present IoT
‘‘things’’, such as home appliances, machines, and various digital ob- comprises five phases [6]. Initially, it started with connecting comput-
jects. These things or devices are mostly resource-constrained and ers, whereas in the second phase, the concept of the World Wide Web
can perform operations such as sensing, monitoring, pre-processing
(WWW) came and led to connecting computers all around. The third
(i.e., lightweight computing), and exchanging of data [1]. Moreover,
phase started with the emergence of the mobile internet, which con-
these devices are communication-capable and are connected over the
Internet using different underlying technologies and protocols such as nected mobile devices to the Internet. In the next phase (i.e., the fourth
RFID, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, Zigbee, LoRa, and Sigfox [2]. phase), people started joining the Internet by using social networking
According to [3], the number of such connected devices will reach 75 platforms, and finally, the concept of IoT originated [1,6]. Some of
billion by the end of 2025. Further, it is expected that by 2030 the the promising applications of IoT are healthcare, smart home, smart
number of devices connected to the Internet will touch the mark of city, smart grid, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) [1]. Despite
500 billion [4]. the hype, several issues revolve around IoT, like centralization, massive
In 1982 the first practical application of IoT was implemented data gathering, scalability, security threats, privacy issues, resource
when a Coca-Cola machine installed at Carnegie Melon University was limitation, mobility, and interoperability [3,7]. Blockchain (BC) can
connected with APRANET to find if the available drinks were cold or play a cardinal role in mitigating these issues thereby paving the way
not [3]. Later, the term Internet of Things was given by Kevin Ashton in
for a blockchain-enabled IoT ecosystem.
1999, and in the 2000, LG launched the world’s first internet-enabled

∗ Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: shikhamathur806@gmail.com (S. Mathur), anshuman.kalla@ieee.org (A. Kalla), gueu@zhaw.ch (G. Gür),
manojkumar.bohra@jaipur.manipal.edu (M.K. Bohra), madhusanka@ucd.ie (M. Liyanage).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2023.109726
Received 28 April 2022; Received in revised form 25 February 2023; Accepted 16 March 2023
Available online 21 March 2023
1389-1286/© 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Table 1 Bitcoin is the most popular and the first use case of blockchain tech-
Summary of the main acronyms used in this paper.
nology specially designed for monetary transactions. Nevertheless, with
Acronym Definition time, BC has been found beneficial for many other domains such as
BC Blockchain healthcare, supply chain, education, insurance, and logistics [13].
BTC Bitcoin
The meanings of the abbreviations used in this paper are introduced
CTN Communicating Things Network
CH Cluster Head
in Table 1.
CHC Centralized Healthcare Controller
DLT Distributed Ledger Technology 1.1. Advantages of blockchain in IoT
DAG Directed Acyclic Graph
DPoS Delegated Proof of Stake
BC ends up being quite possibly the most promising advancement
DApps Decentralised Applications
DCS Decentralised, Consistent & Scalable to unleash the maximum potential of IoT. The advantages of using BC
DoS Denial of Service for IoT are discussed as follows [14]:
EHR Electronic Health Record
EV Electric Vehicle 1.1.1. Reduced cost
FSC Food Supply Chain
HC Healthcare
For every emerging technology, the cost is an essential factor of
HIPAA Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act consideration. IoT follows a centralized approach, and numerous in-
IoT Internet of Things termediary (third-party) services are also used. Each of these services
ICO Initial Coin Offering charges some fee which gets added to the overall cost [15]. As a result,
ITO Initial Token Offering
the overall cost gets inflated. On integrating BC with IoT, the BC P2P
IIoT Industrial Internet of Things
IV Intelligent Vehicle decentralized network acts as backend; thus, the centralized server is
ITS Intelligent Transportation System no longer required. Furthermore, using smart contracts helps elimi-
LMDS Lamport Merkle Digital Signature nate the need for third-party services. Therefore, BC for IoT reduces
MAS Multi-Agent System intermediate cost or brokerage fees [14,16,17].
MEC Mobile Edge Computing
MT Mobile Terminals
NONCE Number Used Only Once 1.1.2. Trust among parties
NT Network Theory Trust is defined as when all the participating nodes in the network
PoW Proof of Work can communicate and share data without worrying about the integrity
PoS Proof of Stake
of the data [18]. For communication and data sharing in the network,
PBFT Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
PoET Proof of Elapsed Time
maintaining trust is important [18]. It can be achieved by removing
PoI Proof of Importance malevolent nodes from the network [18]. IoT involves a lot of inter-
PoB Proof of Burn connected devices and an overwhelming amount of data is shared and
P2P Peer-to-Peer processed, which requires trust among the users to share data. But these
PAT Principal Agent Theory
IoT devices do not communicate with each other due to possibility
PK Public Key
RBV Resource-Based View of a loss of data [19]. But, by integrating BC with IoT brings trust
SC Smart Contracts among the participants. Because of its decentralized and distributed
SATS Satoshi trust mechanism, all the participating nodes can view each transaction’s
SCM Supply Chain Management
details and validation is done by establishing the consensus, which
SHS Smart Home System
Tx Transaction
helps in maintaining the transparency and trust between the users [16].
TxID Transaction Identification
TCA Transaction Cost Analysis 1.1.3. Privacy
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Privacy is defined as protection of information from exposure to
UTC Coordinated Universal Time
unauthorized ones [20]. It can be either data privacy or user privacy
WBAN Wireless Body Area Network
or location privacy. The availability of private sensor data such as per-
sonal identifying information or indirect information like location [21],
through which users identity can be revealed to malicious users is loss
BC is one of the most prominent types of Distributed Ledger Tech- of privacy [20]. It is important to maintain privacy for successful im-
nology (DLT) where the ledger (i.e., database of transactions) is dis- plementation of IoT. In particular, involves several centrally connected
tributed among all the nodes in a Peep-to-Peer (P2P) network [8]. The devices, continuously transmitting data and numerous companies are
word blockchain implies the data structure used to build and manage monitoring this data, and sometimes they can misuse personal data or
the distributed ledger. Fundamentally, the data structure used for the identity [22]. But by combining BC with IoT, a blockchain-generated
ledger in BC is a growing sequence of logically linked (i.e., crypto- address is provided to all the participants and interactions occur be-
graphically chained) blocks to build a chain of blocks [9]. A block is tween these addresses. The physical world identity of these participants
a unit that contains a set of verified transactions that occurs during is not revealed. For IoT applications that involve sensitive information,
a given time window and are cryptographically secured. Every block this feature will be of great use to hide the real identity [23,24].
is connected with the previous block using a hash-based chain. This
means the hash of the previous block is stored in the current block. The 1.1.4. Security
first block of a blockchain is called the genesis block [10], which does Security is defined as the protection against the cyberattacks and
not have any transaction. Moreover, the value of the ‘previous block vulnerabilities. Authentication, authorization, integrity, interoperabil-
hash’ field is set to zero in the genesis block [11]. ity, or adaptability are the key aspects for any system to maintain
BC intensively uses cryptographic techniques such as hashing, public– security [18]. Maintaining security means security of device, data trans-
private key pair, digital signature, Merkle tree, and time-stamping. mission and data storage [25]. Security in terms of IoT is protecting
Moreover, it employs a consensus mechanism to establish an agreement devices present in the network, from intruders [25]. In the large-
in a decentralized environment [12]. Some unique features of BC scale deployment of IoT, handling security vulnerabilities is a major
technology are tamper-persistent, transparency, non-repudiation, proof challenge due to heterogeneity of the network. BC intrinsically supports
of provenance, fault tolerance, pseudonymity, decentralized decision- security by establishing trust through its immutable and decentralized
making, and distributed ledger. From the application point of view, nature [26]. Since it intensively uses cryptographic mechanisms like

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Table 3
Top 5 productive journals in BC IoT research.
Rank Sources Documents Citations
1 IEEE Internet of Things Journal 41 696
2 Lecture Notes in Computer Science 34 82
3 Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 30 176
4 ACM International Conference Proceeding Series 30 165
5 IEEE Access 29 722

• To study and investigate the applications and technical aspects of

integrating blockchain and IoT in-depth.
• To cover as many as eight different BC-IoT applications, including
healthcare, smart homes, smart cities, supply chain, autonomous
vehicles, smart grid, IIoT, and UAVs.
Fig. 1. Statistics of the surveyed research works.
• To classify the existing research works into different categories
for each of the eight applications considered.
Table 2
• To explore the challenges related to the technical aspects (such
Top 10 countries based on publication in the field of BC IoT.
as scalability, security, privacy, data storage, and power con-
Rank Country Publications Citations
sumption) and their possible solutions for the BC-integrated IoT
1 China 191 1802
ecosystem.
2 India 158 889
3 United States 116 1124 • To conduct an exhaustive survey by including the most recent
4 South Korea 55 976 research in the space of BC-enabled IoTs. Fig. 1 depicts year-wise
5 United Kingdom 53 403 statistics of the research works surveyed in this paper.
6 Australia 44 1417
7 Canada 40 599 We started with a first-level bibliometric analysis to further
8 Saudi Arabia 38 225 strengthen our motivation behind conducting this survey. To do so, the
9 France 37 399
Scopus database is used to extract the bibliometric data that covers
10 United Arab Emirates 34 824
the research work done in the blockchain and IoT landscape., The
data exported from Scopus included details like the publication year,
author, institution, and source journal. The search is done using the
PKI, hashing, Merkle tree, and timestamp as well as uses distributed title. In total, 477 valid papers were exported using Scopus. Next,
consensus algorithm for adding new content in the distributed ledger. the VOSviewer tool is used to visualize the extracted data and plot
Hashing makes it impossible to alter the data and a decentralized the graphs [41]. Fig. 2 shows the geographic distribution, i.e., the
peer-to-peer approach makes the network resilient against failures [27]. countries participating in BC-IoT research. As shown in Table 2, China
has the highest number of publications and citations on Blockchain-
1.2. Motivation IoT, followed by India and the United States. Fig. 3 shows the BC-IoT
co-citation journal network, which helps in analyzing the number of ar-
The central aim of this survey is to focus on what BC can bring to ticles from different journals and the frequency of citations. The bigger
the IoT landscape. To this aim, we carried out an in-depth study of the node size, implies more the number of articles published. Moreover,
various contributions made by academia and industry in the domain Table 3 depicts the top five productive journals in Blockchain for IoT
of BC-integrated IoT. Moving forward, we focused on different use research. IEEE Internet of Things Journal has the highest number of
cases emerging from BC-integrated IoT, such as healthcare, smart cities, publications.
smart grids, autonomous vehicle, and UAVs. Moreover, efforts have
been made to explore numerous technical aspects when integrating BC 1.3. Our contribution
with IoT and identify the challenges related to these technical aspects.
Furthermore, the open issues and future research directions are also One of the key contributions of this work is to explore the capabili-
discussed in this survey paper. ties of BC technology and to study how BC can resolve the potential
In view of the above discussion, although numerous survey papers challenges of emerging IoT applications. In particular, the current
exist, not many specifically address the integration of BC and IoT for survey covers the role of BC in numerous IoT application areas such as
a wide range of IoT applications, along with the technical aspects. healthcare, smart homes, supply chain and logistics, smart city, smart
A survey of existing BC protocols for the IoT was presented in [28]. grid, autonomous vehicles, UAVs, and Industrial IoT (IIoT). Moreover,
Numerous surveys on BC technology based on different viewpoints, the present survey puts the important technical aspects (that need to be
such as its architecture, types, consensus algorithm, and characteristics, considered for BC-enabled IoT applications) under a magnifying lens.
were introduced in [29–31]. Various studies exploring the role of BC in In this direction, the challenges related to these technical aspects are
IoT and the impacts of integrating BC with IoT were presented in [32– explored, and several proposed solutions to overcome these challenges
37] and the challenges in coordinating BC and IoT were presented are discussed. Towards the end, the lesson learned from the literature
in [7,14,16,23,38]. Works [14,39,40] discussed the future directions survey is presented, which aims to consolidate answers to how the
in BC technology. maximum benefits can be leveraged by integrating BC with emerging
Table 4 summarizes the recent survey papers on using BC for IoT. In IoT applications.
particular, the table shows (in brief) the main contribution of the recent The contributions of this survey are as follows:
surveys, the IoT applications they study, and the BC technical aspects
they emphasize. Although the existing survey papers cover different • To present blockchain technology and smart contracts in a
IoT applications and BC technical aspects, it is difficult to find one nutshell: The paper presents a synopsis of blockchain technology
paper that studies the use of BC for a wide range of IoT applications in and smart contracts keeping in mind the broader canvas of the IoT
detail. Moreover, most existing surveys focus on the individual aspects, ecosystem. The aim here is to enable the readers to develop the
i.e., either application areas or the technical aspects with challenges. essential foundation of blockchain technology, its salient features,
Thus, the motivation of this paper is four-fold: relevant taxonomy, and typical process flow in the blockchain.

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Fig. 2. Countries participating in BC-IoT research.

Fig. 3. BC-IoT Co-Citation journal network.

• To assimilate and study various BC-enabled IoT applications: types, and transaction flow), smart contracts, and salient features of
The paper outlines a handful of BC-enabled IoT key application BC. Section 3 revolves around various BC-empowered IoT applications.
areas such as healthcare, smart city, smart home, smart grid, This section includes an introduction to these applications, their im-
autonomous vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicle, and Industrial IoT. portance, the challenges in implementing them, how BC can mitigate
In particular, the role of BC in these IoT application areas, and the these challenges, and the related work done in these areas. Section 4
classification of the research works under various categories have discusses the technical aspects such as scalability, security and privacy,
been discussed. IoT data storage, consensus algorithms, and processing power. This
• To investigate pertinent technical aspects and highlight the section outlines these technical aspects by first introducing them, their
challenges related to the integration of BC for IoT: Identify importance for BC, and their importance for IoT as well. Section 5
and discuss the open challenges in integrating BC and IoT and presents the lessons learned and future research directions. Finally,
their possible solutions. The effect of these challenges and the Section 6 concludes the paper. The outline of the paper is presented
work done in these aspects are also discussed. in Fig. 4.
• To discuss future research directions based on the lessons
learned: Based on our findings, we have featured the possible 2. Background
and significant research challenges that have to be addressed.
This will help researchers in related domains to find their future This segment explains the fundamentals of DLT and BC, key at-
directions. tributes of BC, its terminologies and types, and smart contracts.

1.4. Organization 2.1. Distributed ledger technology (DLT)

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 A conventional centralized network uses client–server architecture
provides an overview of DLT, BC technology (related terminologies, where one or more clients are directly connected to the central server.

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Table 4
Summary of recent surveys on blockchain for IoT.
Ref. Main contribution Applications BC technical aspects Relevance to IoT
HC SC SCL SG AV UAV SH IIoT Sca Sec DS CA PP
[35] Discussed the issues in IoT – – – – – – – – ✓ – ✓ – – Presented how BC as a service can
systems and how BC can mitigate be implemented for IoT applications
these issues. Also discussed why and discussed the future research
the BC platform is needed to directions in BC-IoT.
implement IoT.
[37] Discussed the use of BC in IoT – ✓ – – – – – – – – – – – Discussed explicitly the research
considering four scenarios - challenges for all the four different
access control, data provenance, application scenarios considered.
integrity, trusted third party, and
automatic payment platform.
[42] Briefly introduces BC technology ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ – – ✓ – ✓ ✓ ✓ – – Provides a detailed discussion over
with its challenges and the convergence of BC and IoT,
limitations with exploring its Highlighted the challenges and
potential applications. opportunities in IoT and BC
integration, IoT application areas
using BC.
[43] Compared several consensus – – – – – – ✓ – ✓ ✓ – ✓ Discussed the limitations of current
algorithms for IoT system and how BC can
resource-constrained IoT systems overcome them while considering the
using numerous parameters such use case of the smart home.
as BC type, decentralization,
scalability, latency, computation,
storage, and network overheads.
[44] Presented a detailed survey on – – ✓ ✓ – – – ✓ ✓ ✓ – – – Presented a taxonomy for IoT/IIoT
various attacks while mapping security and focused on two specific
each attack to different layers of use cases (smart factory and smart
IoT/IIoT architecture, and grid) for IIoT and (healthcare and
discussed how BC can address VANET) for IoT.
these security challenges.
[45] Presented evolution and working – – – – – – – – ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Discussed the most relevant BC-IoT
principles of BC. Reviewed applications and highlighted the
security solutions offered with the challenges in BC-IoT integration that
use of BC in IoT. need to be considered.
[33] Outlined the architecture that – – – – – – – – – – – – – Also discussed the limitations of the
implements BC in managing previous IoT system and the
heterogeneous IoT systems. challenges in integrating BC and IoT.
[46] Surveyed the recent works done – – – – – – – – – – – – – Briefly reviewed the role of BC in
in BC-IoT, BC-Cloud IoT, and various application areas of IoT such
BC-Fog IoT with a focus on smart as SDN-enabled IoT, mobile IoT, and
cities, homes, and vehicular IoT supply chain.
networks.
[47] Provides a detailed survey – – – – – – – – – ✓ ✓ – ✓ Talked about core security issues in
covering the taxonomy of IoT, how BC can address them as
BC-based IoT security, various well as presented new attack surfaces
attacks on BC-IoT system, and that arise with BC-enabled IoT
framework for BC IoT security. system.
[48] Presented a survey on using BC – – – – – – – – - ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓ Listed out various security issues and
to address security and privacy their adverse effects on different
challenges in IoT and proposed a layers of IoT architecture.
BC-based IoT framework.
[49] Authors have discussed BC and – – – – – – – – – – – – – Authors have used an adaptive
fuzzy blockchain framework for neuro-fuzzy inference system, fuzzy
threat detection in IoT network. control system, and fuzzy matching
modules. Also, they compared the
results with fuzzy classifiers.
Our Paper The paper presents an exhaustive ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Eight distinct IoT applications are
survey on BC for IoT including studied in-depth which are
BC (types, salient features, and envisioned to be immensely benefited
smart contracts), BC-enabled IoT with the integration of BC. Moreover,
applications, important technical future directions for these IoT
aspects along with the challenges applications are discussed based on
in integrating BC and IoT. the lessons learned.

HC — Healthcare; SC — Smart City, SCL — Supply Chain & Logistics, SG — Smart Grid, AV — Autonomous Vehicles, UAV — Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, SH — Smart Home,
IIoT — Industrial Internet of Things, Sca — Scalability, Sec — Security, DS — Data Storage, CA — Consensus Algorithm, PP — Processing Power.

On the other hand, in a decentralized P2P network, multiple nodes are DLT uses cryptographic techniques and a consensus mechanism to
connected in a P2P fashion. Any node is equally capable of serving secure and synchronize the underlying system. A distributed ledger is
a client attached to this decentralized P2P network. DLT comprises a a type of shared ledger where the ledger is replicated at all the nodes
decentralized P2P network of nodes and distributed ledger. Moreover, in the network [15].

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Fig. 4. The outline of the paper.

DLT has the potential to address the many shortcomings of tra- 2.2.2. Merkle tree root hash
ditional centralized approaches. The key highlights of DLT are (i) It is one single hash value that uniquely and compactly represents
decentralized governance, (ii) immutability, (iii) reliability, and (iv) all the transactions present in the block body. This hash digest is
authentication [50]. Creating immutable records helps in achieving calculated using the Merkle tree technique. Moreover, it enables easy
transparency, immutability, and verifiability and also reduces costs as- verification of the correctness of the transactions in a given block.
sociated with distributing and maintaining the ledger [51]. In general,
DLT is a class, and BC is one of the most popular members of that class. 2.2.3. Timestamp
In other words, BC is a type of DLT.
It is the time of creation of a block, which is stored as one of the
fields in the block’s header [56]. This field is useful in keeping a record
2.2. Blockchain technology
of the time when the transactions were confirmed which later helps in
BC, a type of DLT, consists of a distributed ledger and a P2P network knowing when and what has happened on the blockchain and makes it
of nodes and uses cryptographic techniques and consensus mechanisms. more difficult for an intruder to alter the blockchain. It is the current
The distinguishing factor for BC is the data structure (i.e., the chain time in seconds in GMT since 1 January, 1970 [57,58]. The value of
of blocks) used to build the distributed ledger. Any update in the timestamp (𝑇 ) is valid if 𝑇 is greater than the median timestamp of
ledger is achieved by using a consensus mechanism that establishes the previous eleven blocks and 𝑇 − 2ℎ is smaller than the network time
agreement among the nodes, which helps in achieving consistency. Any (median of the timestamps returned by all nodes connected to the node)
change in the ledger is synchronized and reflected at each participating (h is a cryptographic hash function) [59].
node [52].
Before moving forward it is necessary to understand the basic block 2.2.4. Nonce
structure and the related terminologies used in BC [30,53]. Fig. 5 shows is a number used once. It is a four bytes field used to compute the
the detailed view of BC. hash of a block’s header such that the hash value meets the difficulty
level. More specifically, it is a random number that the miner keeps
2.2.1. Block
guessing to calculate the block header’s hash value. In a brute-force
As mentioned above, BC is a chain of blocks where each block
manner, a miner starts with zero as a value for the nonce field and
contains a set of finite and valid transactions. The blocks are connected
keeps increasing it for every iteration of hash calculation [58]. A miner
using a cryptographic hash-based chain. In general, a block is divided
stops when the computed hash value meets the difficulty level, and a
into two parts — block header and block body. The block header
is used to hold various fields such as version, timestamp, previous new block is said to be mined for the specific nonce value (used in that
block’s hash, the difficulty level in form of nbits, Merkle root hash, iteration).
and nonce. The block body contains transactions and at times smart
contracts as well [54,55]. Usually, the number of transactions that can 2.2.5. Previous hash
be accommodated in one block depends on the maximum allowable The previous block hash field of any given block stores the block
block size, which is platform-dependent. For instance, the maximum hash of the immediate previous block. This leads to the formation
size of the BC block is 1 MB. of a chain of blocks and makes the blockchain an append-only data

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Fig. 5. Structure of the block.

Table 5
Comparison among public, private & consortium blockchains [29,61].
Property Public Private Consortium
Consensus Algorithm All nodes One organization Only selected nodes
Immutability Extremely difficult to alter Modifications are possible Modifications are possible
Efficiency Low High High
Centralized No (fully decentralized) Yes Partially centralized
Node’s Joining Process Permissionless Permissioned Permissioned
Entities’ Identity Pseudonymous Known entities Known entities
Confirmation of Transaction Order of minutes Order of milliseconds Order of milliseconds
Write Permission Write for all Write for nodes from single organization Write for only selected nodes from group organizations
Asset Local Asset Any Asset Any Asset

structure. Any change in a transaction of any block by an attacker 2.3.2. Private blockchain
will produce a different block hash, which should be reflected in all It is specifically designed for a single organization, and participants
the subsequent blocks. Thus the ledger becomes inconsistent and the need permission to join the network. After entering the network, par-
changes can be easily detected. The value of the previous hash field in ticipants can access the transactions in the ledger. Only a few selected
the genesis block is set to zero. nodes from the governing organization have exclusive rights to add
Another interesting concept in BC is forking [60]. At any given new blocks and update the ledger. Participating nodes in the private
time, a large number of nodes (i.e., miners) can participate in BC BC do not need to solve the computationally intensive puzzle to reach
network. Thus, there can be circumstances when different miners mine a consensus. Moreover, usually, the nodes are not provided with any
different (valid) blocks at the same time. In this situation, these valid
financial intensives. Hyperledger fabric is the most widely used private
but different blocks are being broadcasted in the BC network. Hence,
permissioned BC [30,62].
different parts of the BC network will append different blocks resulting
in inconsistency in the blockchain. In other words, different nodes will
have different recent blocks in their local copy of the ledger, and this 2.3.3. Consortium or federated blockchain
is known as the forking problem. BC resolves this issue by considering Consortium or federated BC is designed for multiple companies
simply the longest chain while all the blocks in the other smaller chains or a group of companies participating in a single BC. It is partially
will be discarded or considered orphaned, as shown in Fig. 5. centralized with known set of participating nodes from group organi-
zations [61]. Table 5, shows the comparison among the three types of
2.3. Types of blockchain BCs.

There are numerous ways based on which BCs can be divided into 2.4. Smart contracts
different types. Fundamentally, BCs can be considered of three types —
public, private, and consortium BC.
Smart contracts were first proposed in 1994 by Nick Szabo [65].
2.3.1. Public blockchain Smart contracts are equivalent to contracts in the real world, the only
It is open and accessible for all who want to participate in the difference is that they do not need any administering body for their
network. Public BC is fully decentralized, where no entity controls the execution and they are softwarized [66]. Smart contract is a set of logic
BC, and every participating node has equal rights [30]. Moreover, all and functions (with the relevant data) that get executed when the pre-
the participating nodes can participate in the validation of transactions defined conditions are satisfied by an external or internal trigger [46].
and block mining [62,63]. Examples of public BC implementation are Usually, a smart contract is executed when it is invoked by a valid
Bitcoin and Ethereum or Litecoin [64]. transaction containing the address of the smart contract that occurs

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Fig. 6. Characteristics of blockchain.

in the system and has access rights. Smart contracts when running cryptocurrency platform specially designed for Banking, gaming, ad-
on top of a blockchain provide numerous advantages, automation is vertising, and marketing and its native cryptocurrency is XEM [69].
one of them. Moreover, as the need for intermediaries is removed, the Some additional features of NEM such as time stamping documents,
contract also reduces the expenses required in paper-based traditional identity proof, creation of customized digital assets, and support of
contracts [67]. smart contracts. Stellar, a blockchain platform designed for financial
Ethereum was the first BC platform that supported smart con- transactions, and its native cryptocurrency is Lumen, supports smart
tracts [68]. It runs on the Ethereum runtime engine and the byte contracts [69]. Blockchain-based platform Waves, designed for appli-
code is generated since it runs faster on the Ethereum Virtual Machine cations like ride-sharing and customized asset trading and its native
(EVM) [46]. Since smart contracts are stored on the Ethereum (i.e., on- cryptocurrency Waves uses Scala programming language, and language
chain), their byte codes are assigned a unique address after deploying for smart contracts is non-Turing complete language [69].
it on EVM [46,69]. This unique address assigned to the smart con-
tracts in Ethereum is 20 bytes [70]. The transaction associated with 2.5. Salient features of blockchain
smart contracts results in a change in the state of the decentralized
ledger [46]. As the smart contracts are stored inside the BC, they In this section, we discuss the unique features of BC technology as
inherit some of the BC properties such as immutability, autonomous follows. Fig. 6, illustrates the basic attributes of BC.
execution, transparency, accuracy, and elimination of trusted third
parties [69]. By immutability, we mean once the smart contract is 2.5.1. Distributed
created, it must be verified before the deployment in the nodes as Since BC is a type of DLT thus at the core of blockchain lies a
it cannot be changed. So no one can tamper with the contract [38]. ledger which is shared with all the participating nodes such that each
Autonomous execution means the program written in smart contracts node has an exact replica of the ledger [15]. Each node participating in
will run automatically once the BC system reaches the triggering state, the network can access and view the complete history of transactions
which also eliminates any biased operations, not only builds trust but without the need for any centralized authority [73].
also gives accurate output, and also the need for a trusted third party
is not required [69]. Transparency means that the smart contract logic 2.5.2. Decentralization
is visible to all the nodes, which ensures trust between the parties [69] In traditional centralized architecture each transaction is regulated
and distribution means that the output of the contract is validated by and validated by a central party or an intermediary. In contrast, BC
each node in the same way as any other transactions. Bitcoin was the uses decentralized network of nodes for validating and confirming
first cryptocurrency to support smart contracts features but it has very transactions. As soon as a transaction is initiated, it is broadcasted to
limited features. Then world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum every node in the network. Any node can mine a new block which
was designed specially to support smart contracts [71]. Ethereum contains this transaction and thus the transaction gets confirmed in
platform specially designed for financial and asset trading, its native decentralized manner (not by a central authority) [15]. Moreover,
cryptocurrency is Ether, also supports smart contracts, written in LLL decentralization ensure no single point of failure and services are
(Low-level lisp-like language), Serpent, Viper, and Solidity [66,72]. unaffected even if some of the nodes are unavailable.
Hyperledger fabric designed especially for enterprise users such as
supply chain, trade finance, and stock trading, supports smart contracts 2.5.3. Immutability
written using Java, NodeJs, and GoLang programming language [69]. All the data, i.e., blocks (and transactions within) are cryptograph-
Corda designed another blockchain-based platform for applications ically sealed and chained together. Smallest change in any transaction
like energy trading, insurance, and retail marketing. Its native cryp- (in a given block) will lead to drastic change in the value of the Merkle
tocurrency is Corda coin, which supports smart contracts written us- root hash and consequently that block header’s hash value will change.
ing languages like Cotlin/Java [69]. NEM is also a blockchain-based As a result, all the subsequent blocks will have to be changed which

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needs lot of re-computations and consensus among the participating and provides a better solution than the traditional way of storing data.
nodes [74]. Thus, once a block is mined and added to blockchain it Blockchain because of its features such as distributed, decentralized,
is said to be immutable (or temper-proof). immutability, and availability, becomes the most suited solution to the
problems being faced by the healthcare industry. For maintaining the
2.5.4. Provenance privacy of patients’ medical records, BC empowers patients to have
Whenever a transaction is recorded in the BC, details of the trans- control over their medical data and can decide who can access their
action are recorded across all the nodes because of the decentralized medical history [84]. Another issue with medical data (or history) is
nature of BC. Also, BC uses timestamps to record each transaction scattered storage. Usually, part of patients’ medical data is stored with
which allows each node to keep the order of the transactions [75]. Since hospitals, some of other medical details are with the primary doctor,
each transaction is transparently and permanently recorded across all and some can be with the specialists. In this scenario, BC provides a
the nodes, the user can verify and trace transactions at any time [30]. solution to assemble all these data at one platform [85]. Counterfeit
It provides traceability and transparency of the data [76]. of medical drugs can also be resolved using BC technology, where
the details of the drug supply chain from drug manufacturing to its
2.5.5. Availability supply to the patient can be updated on blockchain and the concerned
It is another important feature of BC. It means that the services are authorities can keep an eye on every stage of the pharmaceutical
always available to the users because of the decentralized nature of supply chain [86]. Another challenge being faced by the healthcare
the BC network and the system becomes immune to various intentional sector is fraud in medical claims and billing. Sometimes healthcare
(e.g., denial of service attack) or accidental failures [77]. providers claim charges for non-performed services, overcharging the
actual services. Moreover, reimbursement of medical claims is usually
2.5.6. Transparency a time-consuming process and is prone to fraudulent activities. BC can
Another important key attribute of BC is transparency. All the automate the medical claim’s workflow where each person involved in
participating nodes present in the network can view all the transaction the process can be made accountable for his/her activities and everyone
details and associated values. Each node present in the network has a sees the same information stored on BC [86]. Some of the commer-
copy of the ledger and is authorized to verify and trace the previous cial implementations in healthcare are MedRec, used for storing EHR
records in the distributed network which promotes trusted workflow, efficiently and Medicalchain is used in the UK to maintain patient
sharing of data, immutability, and verifiability [75,78]. data [87]. Fig. 7, shows the application areas of BC in the healthcare
domain.
2.5.7. Anonymity
Anonymity is another key strength of BC technology. Each user 3.1.1. Applications of blockchain in healthcare
in the BC network is assigned a unique BC generated alphanumeric • Electronic Health Records - Storing data (patient’s details,
address. Thus users are (pseudo) anonymous, and no central authority health information) digitally is called electronic health record.
is monitoring users‘ private information. Transactions occur between EHR are beneficial that they can be accessed from anywhere [88].
these BC-generated addresses [73]. This feature provides a certain EHR contains sensitive information about patient’s and it is im-
amount of privacy but at the same time, illegal activities could also portant to maintain the privacy and security [89]. To maintain the
happen [76]. medical records or history in unified manner, BC platforms can be
instrumental. Along with maintaining the security and privacy of
2.5.8. Non-repudiation the data, EHRs can be stored and accessed easily [85]. Sharing
Non-repudiation is again a very important feature of BC. Non- of information is another important step and BC provides that
repudiation means users cannot deny the activities performed by them, sharing and trust mechanism [89].
thanks to cryptographic techniques such as digital signature [77,79]. • Medicine Supply Chain - Counterfeit of medicine is another
major issue, that can adversely effect the lives of patients. BC
3. Blockchain-based IoT applications can resolve this by storing all the details related to the drug
supply chain, starting from manufacturing to the final supply of
This section includes the multiple areas in which blockchain-based the medicine to the patient, on the BC network. The key steps
IoT can be utilized, the pertinent challenges, and also provides mea- involved in the supply chain of drugs are manufacturing, trans-
sures to manage these challenges. portation, wholesaler, distributor, retailer, and patient [90]. All
these entities can be registered on the BC platform and authorities
3.1. Healthcare can keep an eye to ensure the quality compliance [86].
• Medical Claim - Nowadays, we heard a lot about fraud by hospi-
Healthcare represents an entire ecosystem where health profession- tals where they charge for non-performed services and overcharge
als (with the help of advanced medical technologies) diagnose, treat the performed services [91]. As a chain of people involved in
and cure illness or diseases of people. It is estimated that the healthcare verifying the bills. A typical process of claim settlement involves
market will touch US$ 372 billion by the year 2022 and the hospital a lot of communication between the concerned authorities which
industry will reach up to US$ 133.44 billion by 2023 [81]. Smart takes a lot of time and sometimes also includes fraud activities.
healthcare originated from smart earth proposed by IBM in 2009 [82]. BC can automate the workflow and each person involved in the
With the increasing role of the healthcare ecosystem powered by ad- process will share the same copy of the record, which ensures no
vanced technologies, a tremendous amount of data is generated, which changes in the copy of the bill [86]. Gem Health is one of the
needs to be managed securely [83]. Some of the major issues being practical and real-time systems for health claims [92].
faced by the healthcare domain are user and location privacy leakage,
counterfeit drugs and medical equipment, loss of ownership and fraud- 3.1.2. Related work
ulent access to stored medical (personal) data, fraud in medical claims The works related to healthcare have been discussed under different
and bills, and secure platforms required for national and international categories which are discussed as follows:
collaboration of a team of healthcare professionals to deal with critical Authentication: Authors Saha et al. [93] and Alzubi et al. [94]
cases and pandemic situations like COVID-19. have worked in the direction of proposing a BC-based approach for
However, managing such a large massive amount of data is a chal- authentication and access control in healthcare. Saha et al. [93] high-
lenging task but BC technology has the potential to mitigate these issues lighted the access control challenges in electronic health records and

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Fig. 7. Application of blockchain in healthcare [80].

proposed a private BC technology-based access control approach that showcased the opportunities offered by BC technology in the healthcare
enhances features like security, and low computational and commu- domain like patient control over the data, storage security, privacy,
nication costs. Rather than using public or consortium BC, authors tamper-proof, and interoperability. For this authors have presented
used private BC as all the data collected in hospitals using IoT-enabled a scheme to store medical data using BC and compared it with the
devices is confidential and sensitive. Also authors showed that their traditional approach in terms of tamper-proof, privacy protection, and
proposed approach is resistant to various attacks like impersonation secure storage.
attacks, replay attacks, offline guessing attacks, man-in-the-middle at- In line with [95], Tripathi et al. [81] not only discussed the techni-
tacks, ephemeral secret leakage attacks, and anonymity and untrace- cal challenges such as data security, users’ privacy, and lack of skilled
ability attack. In their proposed access control scheme, the authors manpower, but also highlighted social barriers such as reluctance to
considered two tasks i.e. node authentication (all the newly enrolled adopt new technology, conventional and irrational mindset, and ab-
users must authenticate themselves with hospital authority for authen- sence of core infrastructure, in the adoption of the smart healthcare
tic information) and key establishment (after authentication user can system. To mitigate these issues authors proposed a BC-based frame-
establish the shared key with hospital authority for future communica- work for smart healthcare to attain the security and integrity of the
tions). data. BC allows privacy preserved and secure data exchange of patient
Moving forward Alzubi et al. [94] proposed a BC-enabled secured data. Entities involved in Smart and secured healthcare system (S2HS)
authentication technique for medical IoT devices using Lamport Merkle are mainly connected using a wireless sensor network (WSN). Entities
Digital Signature (LMDS). Their proposed approach is designed for involved are IoT-based wearable devices, EHR, encryption/decryption
securing the data transmitted between the patient and the hospital. and standardization, BC mechanism, and end-users. Their proposed
It includes mainly four entities. The first entity records the sensitive approach uses two-level of BC i.e. private and public BC to provide
medical data of patients obtained from MHEALTH, Second and third isolation among the entities involved and helps in achieving consistent
entity performs signature generation and verification using LMDSG and and transparent workflow. Taking forward the same issue, in 2021,
LMDSV respectively. The fourth entity is the centralized healthcare author Hemalatha et al. [96] highlighted the challenges in a traditional
controller. Lamport Merkle Digital Signature generation (LMDSG) is approach like a single point of failure, mistrust, data manipulation, and
used for authenticating i.e., (signature generation and verification) IoT tampering, and how BC can resolve these issues. To resolve such issues,
devices. Authentication is done by creating a tree in which leaves the authors proposed a BC-IoT-based approach to protect and save
represent a hash function of a patient‘s sensitive and confidential storage of the medical data. Their approach suggested using private BC
medical data. The root of LMDSG is calculated using Lamport Merkle as it is more stable and provides stronger authentication processing.
Digital Signature verification (LMDSV) by a centralized healthcare BC with KSI (public key infrastructure strategies) is used to verify data
controller (CHC) to preserve patients’ confidential data from intruders. integrity and Merkle root hash is used to validate the timestamp. To
Verification is done when the hash of the public key is equal to the leaf test the performance of the proposed framework, the authors used
then it becomes the root of the tree and the signature becomes valid. Apache JMeter and showed that the proposed approach takes less time
Authors analyzed the performance in terms of communication overhead than the current system. Along with that, in 2021, Zaabar et al. [97]
(decreased by 20%), communication time (decreased by 17%), security proposed a Hyperledger fabric BC, based approach for the secured
(improved by 8%), authentication accuracy (increased by 8%), data management of healthcare data and resolves the storage issues of a cen-
confidentiality rate (improved by 9%), authentication time (improved
tralized system. For storage of data, the decentralized database OrbitDB
by 11%) and privacy-preserving rate (increased by 7%).
with IPFS, as an off-chain database is used. For communication HTTP
Security: and CoAP (constrained application protocol) are used. In particular,
Chen et al. [95], Tripathi et al. [81], Hemalatha et al. [96] and six layers are there; IoT physical layer, connectivity layer, off-chain
Zaabar et al. [97] have worked to improve security while storing database layer, BC network layer, application layer, and users layer.
medical data. Chen et al. [95] discussed the healthcare domain and Moreover, analysis was done in terms of data integrity, confidentiality,
the challenge it faces in storing health records such as no assurance availability, traceability, and data privacy. Pandya et al. [98] discussed
of integrity and reliability of patient information, privacy leaks, cen- that federated learning is a cost-effective and promising solution to
tralized approach, and malicious tampering. Furthermore, the authors healthcare incorporating privacy, as it utilizes a distributed AI approach

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to receive local updates from various medical devices, such as the an ensemble learning model for medical image segmentation, for which
Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices so that local data does not a voting mechanism is used. To secure the learning process blockchain
have to be accessed directly, which helps in preserving privacy leaks. technology is used. The paper highlights the advantages of blockchain-
Ch, Rupa et al. [99] proposed a cyber–physical system and blockchain- enabled IoMT. Moreover, the author evaluated the framework IoMT in
based smart healthcare system. Bayesian grey filter-based convolution four different medical datasets.
neural network (BGF-CNN), PSO, and GWO optimization techniques are Table 6, lists out the work done in integrating BC-Health care.
used. Moreover, Blockchain with CPS is used to enhance security. In
particular, accuracy and time complexity are improved. 3.1.3. Summary
Real Time Monitoring: In 2018, Wang et al. [82] and Griggs Healthcare is a platform where concerned professionals take care
et al. [101] both worked in the same direction and propose approach of various diseases and cure patients. By introducing smart healthcare
for real-time monitoring of the patient. Wang et al. [82] used an systems, society will be benefited in terms of public healthcare man-
artificial system, computational experiments, and parallel execution agement, online access, medical data sharing, availability of data, no
in combination with BC technology to link patients, hospitals, and central node dependency, and a patient-centric system. Nonetheless,
healthcare communities for sharing of health records. Further, the the existing system has a few lacking areas such as lack of trust,
authors developed a blockchain-based system using consortium type scattered data, centralized approach, security, and privacy. By the
BC to deal with the specific case of Gout disease. For data storage, application of BC, these challenges can be resolved in terms of accuracy,
the hash of the data is stored on the blockchain, and for generating global health data sharing, irreversible transactions, distributed and
the consensus among the nodes, used Delegated proof of stake (DPoS) decentralized storage, transparency, no third-party involvement, and
consensus algorithm. DPoS allows nodes to elect some number of authorized access. All these features will help in improving the overall
trustees called delegates, who can collect transactions turn by turn and functioning of the healthcare ecosystem and enable various stakehold-
bundle them in a block. The remaining nodes verify the block and add ers to securely access complete medical history which is generally
it to the BC. Data sharing and record review are performed using BC- scattered among different hospitals and medical institutions. Numerous
enabled smart contracts. Here health bureaus serve as the audit nodes research works have been carried out to explore the applicability of BC
to ensure integrity. While Griggs et al. [101] proposed an approach in the healthcare domain. In particular, researchers have made efforts
for automated remote patient monitoring, by sending notifications to to enhance authentication and access control of medical data using
the patient and medical professionals along with a record of who has digital signatures, node authenticity, and improved key establishment.
initiated the activity. All the sensitive medical information will not be To enhance security hierarchical BC, public key infrastructure strate-
stored on the BC but stored using an EHR storage database instead gies, and private type BC are used. Furthermore, off-chain (cloud) data
only the fact that the event occurred is stored on the BC. The logs storage, consortium type BC, and DPoS consensus algorithm have been
about measurements and treatments are also stored on the blockchain suggested for real-time monitoring and data sharing with revocability.
along with smart contracts. Authors used a smart contract (written Few points that need attention for widespread adoption of BC in
using solidity language) for automatic analysis of health data collected healthcare are better infrastructure and interconnection for easy adop-
and trigger alerts for unusual activity. The authors proposed a DApp tion, secured data sharing among hospitals in a more cost controllable
to manage the user interface. Furthermore, their work presented a manner, and more implementation options can be explored with hyper-
comparison of the proposed approach with the traditional approach ledger, a medical BC network connecting as many health organizations,
in numerous aspects like confidentiality, availability, immutability, the privacy of patient‘s can be improvised by adding anonymous iden-
traceability, speed, privacy, and transparency. In line with that in 2021, tity. Moreover, parallel healthcare systems can be improved and used
Chen et al. [103] presented an IPFS and BC-enabled framework for for other diseases also other than Gout disease. Apart from these,
the detection of diabetes in a very secure way. In particular have a BC-based interoperable electronic health record-sharing framework
three phases i.e., registration phase, user authentication phase, and can also be implemented using faster-distributed ledger technologies
IoT data upload with BC phase. It uses IPFS for storage and smart with identity management of patients. Although there are numerous
contract for the exchange of money in a transparent way. Moreover, benefits of using BC and smart contracts in the healthcare domain, there
the authors presented the performance evaluation of their proposed exist some challenges such as scalability, immense data management,
approach in terms of accountability, block capacity, and processing Interoperability, and a large number of concurrent users. Moreover,
time of transaction. some of the operational aspects that need attention for the widespread
Data Sharing: Cyran et al. [100] and Carter et al. [102] worked adoption of BC in healthcare are awareness among the users, standard-
to improve the data sharing between hospitals and patients. Cyran ization, lack of trust among hospitals and patients to share their medical
et al. [100] highlighted the challenges in the current centralized sys- details, and onboarding of various medical organizations over BC-based
tem like meeting the scale, accessibility, and security requirements of platforms.
healthcare organizations, and suggested BC as a promising solution
for addressing these challenges. Authors proposed a BC-based solution 3.2. Smart homes
for protecting sensitive health-related information and deployment of
BC across various hospitals at large scale. For the deployment of BC A smart home is an IoT-enabled home that improves the quality
across the hospital authors built a containerized solution. The proposed of life of the members of the home by providing them automation,
approach includes the owner for each piece of data and has the right security, comfort, and convenience and allowing them to control the
to decide what amount of data can be accessed by whom at varying gadgets installed in the house using a mobile application [105]. In
levels. Moreover, the proposed system enables the data owner to revoke simple words, smart home enables automation of daily routine tasks
access to the data and ensures that the receiver’s private key with with the help of gadgets or devices installed in a house [42]. For
data is not sufficient to access data. While in 2019, Carter et al. [102] a home to be a smart home, it must-have network connectivity, IoT
discussed the interoperability challenge, in sharing data. To resolve this devices, and a mobile application to access and control devices from
challenge, the authors have suggested an approach using the Amazon anywhere [105]. Smart home adoption rate is continuously growing
web service and Ethereum BC. The proposed approach uses AWS cloud at a rate of 20.8% from the year 2018 to 2022 [106]. The global
service, information related to patient health identifiers such as Data of market for smart meters and home automation will grow to $44 billion
Birth (DoB), name, and address are not stored on public BC but stored by 2025 [107]. Some facets of a smart home are smart door locks,
using AWS cloud storage as AWS is highly customizable and provides smart lighting, smart parking, and video surveillance [105]. The key
security in sharing health data digitally. Belhadi et al. [104] proposed challenges faced by smart home applications are security (such as

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Table 6
Summary of related work in BC-healthcare.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Wang et al. [82] Proposed a blockchain-powered parallel Consortium blockchain is used to link ✓ ✓ – ✓ –
healthcare framework based on an patients, hospitals, and healthcare
Artificial system, Computational communities, a hash of the data is
experiments, and Parallel execution, i.e, stored on-chain and the DPoS (Delegated
the APC approach. The prototypical Proof of Stake) consensus algorithm is
system is developed for Gout disease used. Data sharing is done using
and deployed at the hospital of Qingdao BC-enabled smart contracts.
University, China.
Cyran et al. [100] Proposed a blockchain-based approach Ethereum is used to deploy smart ✓ ✓ – – ✓
to protecting sensitive health-related contracts with Docker containers, and
information and deploying BC across various cryptographic techniques like
various hospitals. Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption
(ECIS) for enhancing security. Along
with this, Inter-Planetary File System
(IPFS) is used to store large files to
ensure minimum redundancy.
Griggs et al. [101] Proposed a BC-based smart contract for Private and consortium type blockchain ✓ ✓ – ✓ ✓
secure analysis and management of is used to permit the authorized users to
medical sensors. Their approach read the content on the blockchain and
integrates WBAN and smart contracts only a few selected nodes can run the
over BC to create an immutable ledger smart contract and mine new blocks.
of transactions. All the medical Private BC is created using the Ethereum
information is stored off the chain in the protocols and the PBFT consensus
EHR database. algorithm is used.
Carter et al. [102] Proposed a framework by combining Ethereum public BC is used as it ✓ – – – –
AWS with Ethereum BC for sharing supports smart contracts. To overcome
information between the hospitals. BC the storage scalability issue, off-chain
helps in improving security and AWS cloud storage is used. Uses
inter-operability between hospitals by AES-GCM with HMAC-based key
allowing the complete sharing of data. derivation function HKDF, and 256-bit
encryption key.
Chen et al. [95] Proposed a framework for sharing Uses both BC and cloud storage. ✓ – – – ✓
medical records that involve entities like Information like store address, hash
a patient, service provider, and medical value, and permission of medical data
institution. Furthermore, a structure for are stored on the BC whereas data
the medical block with the header and generated by medical institutions, and
body is presented. patient details are stored using the cloud
under the chain. Suggested the use of
the DPoS consensus algorithm.
Saha et al. [93] Proposed an approach for access control Uses private BC and PBFT consensus – – ✓ – –
to provide better security and requires algorithm for secure access control. Uses
low computational and communication ECC for signature and SHA-256
costs. algorithm for the secure
collision-resistant hash function.
Tripathi et al. [81] Proposed a BC-based secured and smart Uses two-level of BC: Private BC is used – ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
healthcare system (S2HS) to provide to record internal entities like healthcare
better security, privacy, and integrity. providers, clinicians, and inventory,
Data captured using different sensors is whereas, public BC is used for external
encrypted using BC, and stored in a entities like patients, pharmacists, and
distributed approach and all the entities insurance companies. Access to data is
involved are connected using WSN. maintained using smart contracts.
Hemalatha et al. [96] Proposed an IoT-based BC e-healthcare Uses private BC with KSI to verify the – ✓ ✓ – ✓
framework for storing and managing data integrity. For comparison with the
medical data. conventional system uses Apache JMeter
and shows proposed approach takes less
time.
Alzubi et al. [94] Proposed a BC-enabled approach to Author evaluated the proposed approach ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
preserve medical data transmitted using CloudSim 3.0. The proposed
between patient and hospital using approach is analyzed in terms of
Lamport Merkle Digital Signature computational overhead, computational
(LMDS). The proposed architecture time, authentication accuracy and time,
includes four entities for sensitive data, data confidentiality rate, data integrity,
signature generation, signature and privacy-preserving rate.
verification, and a centralized health
controller.

(continued on next page)

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Table 6 (continued).
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Chen et al. [103] Proposed a BC-driven framework for the BC with IPFS for cloud storage is used ✓ ✓ – – ✓
detection of diabetes and a privacy for data storage. Uses smart contracts
server. The proposed framework includes for the exchange of money and property.
three phases i.e., the registration phase,
user authentication phase, and IoT data
upload with the BC phase.
Zaabar et al. [97] Proposed a BC-driven solution for secure Uses Hyperledger fabric framework, ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
healthcare data management and access control list, and practical
resolving centralized storage issues. byzantine fault tolerance consensus
algorithm.
Pandya et al. [98] Discussed the use of FL in various Author presented a detailed survey of FL – – ✓ – ✓
domains and compare it with the in various domains along with related
traditional ML approach. work done.
Belhadi et al. [104] Proposed an ensemble learning model Genetic algorithm is used to optimize ✓ – – – ✓
for medical image segmentation by hyper parameters along with blockchain
using a voting mechanism and technology.
blockchain technology and evaluated it
in four different medical data sets.
Ch et al. [99] Proposed a cyber–physical system and Bayesian grey filter-based convolution ✓ – – – ✓
blockchain-based smart healthcare neural network (BGF-CNN), PSO, GWO
system. optimization techniques, and blockchain
are used.

Fig. 8. Application of Blockchain in smart home [106,109,110].

authorization, authentication, access control), privacy (data and user), to communicate with each other. For example, when someone enters
and system configuration security [106,108]. Another challenge is the home, the light should automatically turn on; for this, the lamp
IoT devices have limited memory and power. Moreover, conventional needs to receive signals from the motion sensor [84]. The BC tech-
IoT systems are centralized and a single point of failure can occur. nology enables secure communication among smart devices installed
To resolve these challenges BC is the most suitable and promising inside the smart home, and each device can request data from other
solution [108]. A private blockchain can be used to manage the com- devices instantly [111]. Communication between these devices are
munication among devices and these communications can be recorded considered as transactions and private BC is used to keep the track of
as transactions on the BC [84]. Fig. 8, shows the application areas of these transactions which are immutably stored in the BC ledger. Miners,
BC in the smart home. installed in the smart home, are devices that process all incoming and
outgoing transactions to and from the devices in smart home [112].
3.2.1. Applications of blockchain in smart homes
A smart home consists of IoT-enabled devices (smart devices) and • Security and Privacy - IoT enabled smart homes generate and
mobile applications for remote access. These IoT-enabled devices need exchange lot of personal data between the installed devices [112].

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Use of heterogeneous IoT devices used in smart home creates miner (device that process incoming and outgoing transactions), and
security, privacy and authentication challenges. Existing security local storage (a backup device used by smart devices to store data
frameworks to overcome these challenges are mostly centralized locally in FIFO order). Finally, the author evaluated the performance by
along with noisy and incomplete data and thus are not well using the Cooja simulator in terms of packet overhead, time overhead,
suited for IoT enabled smart home [108,113]. BC with its strong and energy consumption. The evaluation results show little increase
security, pseudonymity, distributed and decentralized nature has but are manageable and security is analyzed in terms of confidentiality,
potential to resolve these challenges in unified manner. integrity, and availability against DDOS attacks and linking attacks.
• Data Storage - Smart home is a collection of various physical In 2018, Dang et al. [113] proposed a BC-IoT-based architecture
devices, connected to internet, sharing data continuously [109]. for smart homes (termed as SHIB — smart home IoT BC) to resolve
Data being generated by IoT enabled smart home can be very the security and privacy issues. Authors designed three smart contracts:
large. The data storage by IoT devices does not meet users security ACC (access control contract for registering, updating, or deleting ac-
requirements because of low capacity, multiple connectivity to cess control method), JC (judge contract for updating the misbehavior
the internet and heterogeneity [114]. BC can play a vital role in judging method), and RC (register contract for updating or deleting
data storage along with maintaining privacy and security [115]. policy of ACC). Also, it has the facility of adding or removing IoT
devices just by adding or deleting respective smart contracts (only
3.2.2. Related work the owner can perform this activity). The proposed SHIB architecture
The research works related to smart homes have been discussed mainly includes a service provider (a device that interacts between IoT
under different categories which are discussed as follows: devices and storage devices), a storage device (devices for storing the
Privacy & Security: Dorri et al. [116], Aung et al. [117], Dorri collected data), the user (owner of a smart home), and a smart home
et al. [112], Dang et al. [113], Singh et al. [118] and Arif et al. [108] (home where IoT devices are installed). At last, the author presented
worked to improve privacy and security in IoT-enabled smart home. the comparison between the proposed and existing architecture using
In 2016, Dorri et al. [116] proposed a lightweight architecture using terms of smart contract, the privacy of data, usage of tokens, updating
BC technology by removing all the extra overheads of BC but at the policies, and judging the misbehavior. Moving ahead in 2019, Singh
same time, it maintains most of the security and privacy benefits et al. [118] present a blockchain and cloud computing-based smart
of BC. The proposed architecture is hierarchical and includes three home architecture known as SH-BlockCC. For analyzing network traffic
tiers; smart home, overlay network, and cloud storage. The first-tier proposed architecture uses MCA (multivariate correlation analysis).
smart home has local BC. Some key attributes of local BC are it is Their proposed architecture includes a smart home layer, blockchain
always mined by a device that is always online and high processing, layer, cloud computing, and service layer. Authors also discussed the
managed by its owner (responsible for adding or removing devices), challenges being faced by the smart home such as security and pri-
and the block is mined and added to the chain without solving PoW vacy, scalability and access control, availability and reliability, and
consensus algorithm which helps in reducing extra overheads of BC. confidentiality and integrity. Furthermore, authors talked about numer-
Second-tier uses an overlay network which is the same as a peer-to- ous services provided by the smart home such as remote controlling
peer network that uses public BC. The nodes (home miner, devices, lights, fuel/smoke leakage, trapped in a bathroom, smart refrigera-
user’s smartphone) present in the network use Tor for connecting to tors, security alarms, and measures of important health signs. Their
the overlay network to add extra anonymity to the network. If the user approach uses ZigBee technology. Finally evaluated the performance
has more than one smart home then they can use shared BC; this can across various parameters like confidentiality, integrity, availability,
lead to forking in shared BC as each device present in the network authentication, and privacy using Cooja and Netsim simulator and the
can decide whether to keep the block or not. To resolve this, devices result shows SH-BlockCC covers all these security aspects.
maintain a table containing the block number and hash of the data for Next in 2020, Arif et al. [108] described various security issues
the last transaction. The proposed architecture is especially for storing because of limited storage and processing power and suggested BC
and accessing data use cases. At last, the author has evaluated the as the most promising solution. The authors proposed architecture
overhead and performance of the proposed architecture and shown that using consortium BC. As public BC is an open network and scalability
it has constant performance. is an issue, the author prefers to use consortium BC with PoW con-
In 2017, Aung et al. [117] discussed about the security and privacy sensus algorithm and SHA-256 algorithm for mining and transaction
issue in IoT-enabled smart homes and suggested an approach of inte- verification. Fundamental building blocks are sensor node (for com-
grating BC with IoT to resolve these issues. The author suggested using municating with supernodes; responsible for transaction verification),
the Ethereum BC platform and proposed and architecture that consists supernode (peer-to-peer server as well as storage for BC ledger; respon-
of a smart home miner (device to maintain private BC), private BC (to sible for transaction management and blockchain storage), blockchain
store the policies set up by the homeowner or for managing transac- (uses PoW mechanism), and user (admin user and general user; users
tions), and local storage. Managing transactions means either storing, are authorized by RESTful API). In line with that, in 2021, Ammi
accessing, or monitoring transactions. But before managing these trans- et al. [119] and Qashlan et al. [120] worked to improve the privacy
actions private BC needs to check the policies set up by the homeowner and security of smart homes. Ammi et al. [119] proposed an approach
means which sensors can store data, who can monitor the data and the for a secure smart home by using BC and improved some of the features
only homeowner can change smart contract policies. For managing all like privacy, integrity, availability, and confidentiality. The proposed
these activities smart contracts are used and computationally intensive approach has four layers; cloud storage, hyperledger fabric, hyper-
mining is not required, which means no need for modern hardware with ledger composer, and smart home layer. On the other side, Qashlan
high-processing CPUs. In 2017, Dorri et al. [112] proposed an archi- et al. [120] proposed an approach by combining attribute-based access
tecture to extend its previous work [116]. The proposed architecture control with smart contracts and edge computing to resolve the security
includes three tiers same as in [116]. Smart homes are connected using and privacy-related challenges while data collection and sharing. In
shared overlays and groups of these overlays are termed clusters, where particular have four users; end-user, IoT devices, smart home multi-
each cluster chooses a Cluster Head (CH) which are connected using edge servers, and the cloud. Their proposed approach is shown to be
public BC with two key lists PK requester (list of overlay users‘ PK) resilient against DoS attacks, data mining, modification, and linkage
and PK requestee (list of PKs of smart homes connected to the cluster). attack. Moreover, authors performed the analysis in terms of block size,
Authors considered four different components in their proposed BC and gas cost, and time cost to determine the feasibility and efficiency of the
IoT enabled smart home: transaction (communication between local proposed approach. In 2022, Liao et al. [121] proposed an approach
devices), local BC (private BC to keep a record of transactions), home by combining numerous cloud services for secure access control and a

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hyperledger fabric alliance chain. In particular, uses an elliptic curve 3.2.3. Summary
cryptography algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed The smart home aims to provide its residents with convenience,
approach has a better access control scheme. comfort and reduces efforts, and helps in managing, monitoring, con-
Transactive Energy Management:Yang et al. [122] proposed a BC- trolling, and scheduling tasks with just one click i.e., remote monitoring
based approach for transactive energy management in smart homes to systems and automation. For home automation, devices must be con-
resolve the challenges being faced by conventional methods such as nected to the internet which leads to IoT-enabled smart homes. The
low efficiency, lack of privacy, and single point of failure. It uses open existing IoTized smart home approach faces challenges such as the risk
access consortium BC with smart contracts for energy management and of cyber-attacks, threats to personal data privacy and confidentiality,
payment in a decentralized manner; an elliptic curve digital signature unauthorized access control, and centralized architecture. The appli-
cation of BC for IoT-driven smart homes can help in mitigating these
and distributed optimization algorithm for faster processing and small
issues. BC offers distributed, decentralized, and irreversible transac-
transactions. The authors discussed three reasons to use BC; no need
tions, which means as new data arrives, the consensus is established
for any central authority, secure data communication at low cost, and
among the nodes to validate it and a copy of the ledger is updated at
easy payment option. The proposed approach is presented in three
each node. Several research works have been carried out to explore
steps; the first smart home model includes the load and generation,
the capability of BC in IoT-enabled smart homes. Authors worked in
the second trans-active energy management system is introduced, and numerous directions like privacy and security, energy management,
finally, the design of the BC used. The author modified the PBFT and storage and computation. For privacy and security, both public and
consensus algorithm and included a leader selection algorithm and mes- private BC along with smart contracts, ZigBee technology, consensus
sage aggregation scheme which helps in saving the network bandwidth algorithms (such as PoW and PBFT), and elliptic curve digital signature
and increases the speed of the consensus process. For leader selection are used. For storage and computation, private BC with cloud storage
algorithm uses a round-robin leader selection algorithm and secondly, is preferred and implemented using the Cooja simulator. Whereas, for
messages collected by the leader elected are aggregated in a single energy management, consortium BC, smart contracts, elliptic curve
confirmation message to others in prepare and commit phase, which digital signature, and PBFT consensus is used. Despite the benefits
saves the network bandwidth and speeds up the consensus process. offered by BC-powered IoT-enabled smart homes, there exist many
The authors also analyzed the performance using a systematic test challenges. Some of them are large energy consumption due to inherent
on a realistic network of IoT devices and numerical simulation with computation required in BC, scalability issues in terms of connected de-
data collected and the results show that overall cost reduces by 25%. vices and a large amount of data generated, and interoperability issues.
For evaluating BC-IoT, uses Quorum as Quorum is a modified form IoT-enabled smart home involves heterogeneous devices with different
of Ethereum and it modified the PoW algorithm of Ethereum into the operating systems which makes communication and onboarding on the
PBFT algorithm. same platform difficult. Hence, there are some areas which need more
Storage & Computation: Zhou et al. [109] and Ren et al. [115] focus from future prospectus are reduction in computational complexity
worked in the same direction to resolve the storage challenge in IoT- of decentralized algorithms, increased throughput, and interoperability.
enabled smart homes. Zhou et al. [109] proposed a BC-IoT-based
3.3. Smart cities
architecture with a smart contract. The architecture includes a smart
contract (present in each smart home), private BC (local BC in each
A smart city offers higher quality of life to residents, maximum
smart home), and public BC (peer-to-peer BC network to connect the
utilization of resources, and brings transparency in governance. Smart
houses). Core components included are: transactions, smart contract,
cities are built by connecting and integrating their systems and infras-
local storage (data is uploaded to the local miner every 10 days due
tructures using communication technologies, which work collectively
to storage limitations), security (CIA: confidentiality, integrity, and to generate intelligent information [124,125]. According to a report,
availability), and registration service (IoT devices need to be registered 86% of developed countries and 64% of the developing countries
in a distributed ledger). Taking forward, in 2021, Ren et al. [115] will be urbanized by 2050 [126]. According to the United Nations
discussed the challenges faced by the smart home such as unautho- report, 55% of the global population lives in urban areas presently,
rized access and tampering with data. Security challenges other than which is 30% in 1950 and this will reach up to 68% by 2050 [125].
these are information disclosure, illegal user invasion, and equipment With the increasing number of people moving from villages to cities,
failure. To mitigate these issues author proposed an identity-based city planners and municipal governments are facing difficulties. As a
proxy aggregate signature (IBPAS) for improving signature verification, result, challenges such as traffic congestion, air pollution, greenhouse
compressing storage space, and reducing communication bandwidth. gas emission, and waste disposal are affecting the quality of life of
IBPAS consists of six elements: Setup, Key-Gen, Delegation, Proxy-Sign, citizens [84]. Thus, smart cities intends bring many advantages such
Aggregate, and Verify. IBPAS is used to make sure data is viewed as effective management of traffic, improved health, education, en-
by only the home admin and BC storage space is compressed. Their ergy services, transparency in government sectors, and involvement of
proposed scheme uses an edge network center to manage smart devices. citizens [84].
The administrator generates a proxy signature for each block and then Application areas of the smart city where BC can have an im-
aggregates all to obtain the final signature. Then cloud server sends the pact are education, identity management, land registration, energy
final signature to the BC. Finally, the author analyzed the IBPAS with and waste management, public utilities, and intelligent government
existing aggregate signature schemes and shows that IBPAS has better services [124]. Challenges in implementing such systems also exist
in terms of communication energy consumption and reduces storage such as accuracy, uniformity, completeness, and timeliness. Many of
space as various signatures are aggregated into one. the issues can be resolved by using BC technology and its features like
immutability, provenance, and availability. Fig. 9, shows some of the
Device Monitoring: Baucas et al. [123] proposed an approach to
application areas of BC in smart cities. Some of the global BC initiatives
monitor IoT-enabled devices in smart homes to reinforce security. In
in the government and public sector as discussed in [124] and are
particular uses private BC, to find unrecognized devices and localiza-
summarized below:
tion, to gain more information about the source of an attack, and the
Kalman filter is used to increase the accuracy. Furthermore, analysis • Government of Estonia has its own BC solution known as KSI to
shows that private BC with WiFi is the most consistent choice. integrate and maintain national e-health records.
Table 7 summarizes the work done for BC and IoT-based smart • Government of Dubai has partnered with IBM and Consensys, to
homes. enable all transactions on BC and termed Smart Dubai.

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Table 7
Summary of related work in BC-smart home.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Dorri et al. [116] Proposed a lightweight and hierarchical Smart home tier uses local BC and the ✓ – – – ✓
architecture by cost-effectively overlay network tier uses public BC. The
implementing BC. In particular, smart work has been analyzed against various
homes, overlay networks, and cloud attacks. Also, overhead analysis has been
storage form the three tiers of carried out.
architecture.
Dorri et al. [112] This work is the extension of [116] and To analyze the energy consumption, – ✓ ✓ – ✓
includes three tiers namely smart home, packet overhead, and time overhead
cloud storage, and overlay network. The author uses the Cooja simulator. The
smart home tier consists of smart results show that these parameters
devices (centrally managed by miners). witness an increase but are within
manageable limits.
Aung et al. [117] Proposed architecture for smart homes Uses Ethereum BC platform, with private – – – – ✓
to resolve issues related to privacy and BC, smart contract, and mining not
security and for handling access control required. For data storage, local storage
policy, data storage, and data flow is used.
management.
Zhou et al. [109] Presented an overview of IoT, BC, and Uses public BC (for the peer-to-peer – – – – ✓
smart contracts and proposes BC-IoT and blockchain network to connect houses)
smart contract-based architecture for and private BC (used in each smart
smart homes. home), smart contract. Also uses the
Diffie Hellman algorithm for key sharing
and the PoW consensus algorithm.
Dang et al. [113] Proposed a BC-IoT-based approach Uses Ethereum blockchain, three types ✓ – – – ✓
known as SHIB for mitigating security, of smart contracts (ACC, JC, and RC)
privacy, and authentication challenges in written in solidity language, Remix IDE
the smart home. software for writing and compiling
smart contracts, and Ganache
application. Also compared the proposed
approach with existing other approaches.
Singh et al. [118] Discussed the various challenges in Uses cloud computing and blockchain ✓ ✓ ✓ – –
IoT-enabled smart homes and proposes technology, uses encryption and hashing
an architecture for a smart home known algorithm for achieving confidentiality
as SH-BlockCC. Proposed algorithms help and integrity, availability is achieved by
in achieving network attack detection accepting transactions between devices
and response system in smart homes. and miners, authorization is done by
policy header and shared key between
devices and miner, and MCA detection
algorithm is used for identifying the
correlation between traffic.
Arif et al. [108] Talked about the security challenges Proposed framework uses consortium BC ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
being faced by smart homes and with PoW consensus algorithm and
proposes a secure smart home SHA-256 algorithm for mining and
framework using BC, to achieve better verifying transactions. Uses RESTfulAPI
security. (Representational state transfer) for user
authentication.
Ren et al. [115] Proposed an IBPAS scheme to improve IBPAS scheme is evaluated using a – ✓ – – –
signature verification along with simulated version of Bitcoin BC. The
compressing the storage space and scheme is shown to perform efficiently
reducing the communication bandwidth. in terms of storage space required, size
The proposed IBPAS scheme aggregates of the blockchain, and energy
the signatures into one signature. consumption compared to other schemes.
Yang et al. [122] Proposed a BC-based approach for a Uses Elliptic curve digital signature and – – – – ✓
trans-active energy management system distributed optimization algorithm, open
in IoT-enabled smart homes to mitigate access consortium BC and smart
challenges like low efficiency and single contracts, and modified form of PBFT
point failure. consensus algorithm which includes
leader selection algorithm and message
aggregation scheme. And finally
analyzed the performance and the
results show that overall cost reduces by
25%. For evaluating BC-IoT, the author
uses Quorum.
Ammi et al. [119] Proposed a BC-enabled approach to Uses permissioned and private BC, ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
improve the security, integrity, hyperledger fabric, and hyperledger
confidentiality, and availability of the composer with cloud storage.
smart home.

(continued on next page)

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Table 7 (continued).
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Qashlan et al. [120] Proposed an authentication scheme for Uses private Ethereum BC with two ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
preserving the privacy of data collected smart contracts i.e., register and access
and shared. contract with PoW consensus algorithm.
Along with these, uses attribute-based
access control, differential privacy, and
edge computing.
Baucas et al. [123] Proposed a low-end BC-enabled Uses private blockchain and localization – – – – –
approach to enhance the security of to gain more information about the
smart homes. source of the attack. Also, the Kalman
filter is used to increase the accuracy.
Liao et al. [121] Proposed a BC-driven approach with Uses Hyperledger fabric with Elliptic ✓ – – – ✓
different cloud service combinations to Curve Cryptography and attribute-based
achieve a secured and controlled smart access control algorithm.
home. Furthermore, simulation results
show that the proposed approach has
better access control.

3.3.1. Applications of blockchain in smart cities in IoT enabled smart cities. Authors Biswas et al. [133] proposed a
• Smart Governance - Government spends some portion of its framework by integrating BC with smart devices installed in smart
annual budget on social welfare schemes for poor, sick, elder, cities for secure communication. Also identified the major threats to
and underprivileged citizens. However, due to the lack of proper smart cities such as threats to availability, integrity, confidentiality,
system such facilities can be misused. Individuals can create authenticity, and accountability, and discussed various key attributes
multiple copies of their identities and submit them before the provided by BC such as improved reliability and better fault tolerance
authorities, which causes inefficiency and corruption in the sys- capability. For achieving security, the proposed framework includes
tem. To avoid such situations, BC can be used to make the system mainly four layers; the physical layer (which includes sensors and
more transparent and traceable [124]. Also, BC can be used to actuators), the communication layer (which includes various communi-
implement voting system for citizens from the comfort of their cation mechanisms such as Bluetooth, WiFi, Ethernet, and 6LoWPAN),
homes, where citizens’ identity can be verified using BC [127]. the database layer (which includes distributed ledgers and suggested
Thus, BC-enabled smart digital governance approaches can pave to use private ledgers to ensure scalability, performance, and security)
the way for improved public administration, improved service and interface layer (includes various smart applications).
deliveries, enhanced transparency and accountability [128]. In 2018, Sharma et al. [126] proposed architecture for a smart
• Agriculture - Price extortion, higher prices, the presence of a city by integrating a software-defined network(SDN) with BC. The
middleman, quality of food, and manipulations in expiry dates proposed architecture includes a core (miner nodes with high com-
are some of the open challenges being faced by the agriculture putation and storage resources) and edge network (limited storage
domain. The agricultural food supply chain includes farmers, and computation power), due to which it inherits properties of both
agents, transportation, wholesaler, shopkeepers, and consumers, centralized and distributed networks. Miner nodes are responsible for
all can be connected in a trustless manner using BC. Moreover, block creation and verifying PoW. For maintaining the integrity of
BC provides end-to-end visibility and allows tracing the origin the data, digital signatures and hashing (Argon2-based hashing) are
of the product and gives a secure, transparent, and efficient used. Includes memory-hardened PoW scheme called ‘‘Itsuku PoW’’ and
supply chain [124]. Thus, for building resilient, secure, transpar- helps in resolving issues such as a raw re-computation attack, memory
ent, and trustworthy agricultural food supply chain BC has been saving, pseudo-random array, parallel searches, and hash composability
considered as a vital technology [129]. attack. To set up a private BC network it uses Go Ethereum. Finally, the
• Smart Education - To implement BC in the education domain, performance is analyzed in terms of hash rate (continuously adjusted
BC can be used where multiple educational institutes, teaches according to the difficulty) and block size (number of transactions
and students can join to manage and access the records such as for variable block size) which shows that the proposed system attains
student details, migration from one institute to another, course better performance. Also evaluated was the performance overhead of
or degree completed along with the transcripts [84,130]. More- the proposed system in terms of latency and throughput.
over, BC can be used to store the learning activities of students Authors Rahman et al. [134] proposed a BC-based infrastructure to
across different organizations [131]. In future, with the increasing provide security and privacy-oriented smart contract service for IoT-
online mode of education, BC is expected to contribute towards enabled economy in smart cities. Smart contracts offer Spatio-temporal
decentralized and secure education ecosystem. service at a global level without a central authority. For system, im-
• Digital Identity - Blockchain provides a platform where the iden- plementation authors have taken the example of Hajj as a massive
tities of the citizens can be stored digitally and can be accessed by crowded area. In 2020, Zhang et al. [135] worked to achieve higher
citizens from anywhere. One example of a practical application data accuracy and to reduce the possibility of data being stolen. For
of digital identities is the Estonian e-Residency program which this reason, they have proposed an LDC (Lightweight data consensus)
enables users to create a Digital Identity [132]. algorithm based on BC, to be used in smart cities and presented a
comparison with the traditional approach.
After that in 2021, authors Kumar et al. [136] presented a frame-
3.3.2. Related work work for smart cities named trustworthy privacy-preserving secured
The research works related to smart cities have been discussed framework (TP2SF). It includes three modules; trustworthiness, two-
under different categories which are discussed as follows: level privacy, and intrusion detection module. The trustworthiness
Security & Privacy: Biswas et al. [133], Sharma et al. [126], Rah- module uses an address-based BC reputation system to ensure that
man et al. [134], Zhang et al. [135] and Kumar et al. [136] all of them recorded data is authentic. In the two-level privacy module, the first
worked to achieve better security and privacy in a trustworthy manner level is used for authenticating data processing by using the SHA-512

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Fig. 9. Application of blockchain in smart cities [84,124].

hashing algorithm and enhanced proof of work consensus algorithm, for energy. In particular, uses a hyper-ledger fabric framework for
and the second level is used for data transformation and generation, maintaining privacy and confidentiality as participants are directly
and original data was transformed into another format by using PCA affiliated with an exchange of electricity and money, and the ledger
based privacy preservation (feature mapping, selection, normalization, is updated and notified.
and transformation). The proposed approach is deployed using IPFS- Authentication & Authorization: Esposito et al. [140] and Ferreira
based off-chain CloudBlock and BC-enabled on-chain FogBlock. The et al. [141] worked in the same direction to enhance the authentication
authors analyzed the framework in terms of accuracy, detection rate, and authorization in smart cities. Esposito et al. [140] highlighted
F1 score, and precision score using two IoT datasets called BoT-IoT and that existing smart city applications are a combination of different
ToN-IoT. Experiments are performed using R, Python language, and existing applications where each application has its own set of privacy
the machine learning algorithm SciKit-learn. The framework is imple- policies which leads to the challenges such as consistent and secure data
mented using Ethereum, smart contracts written in solidity language, replicas. To resolve this issue author proposes a BC-based approach-
and IPFS. integrating it into the FIWARE platform for distributed management
Trustworthiness: Khan et al. [137] highlighted the importance of of identity and authorization policies with a global view of policies
video surveillance in cities to keep an eye on the activities happening within the system. In the proposed work permissioned BC platform
in the city and presents a BC-based system to store the recordings of Hyperledger Fabric is used to maintain the consistency between the
the video to ensure the trustworthiness of the recordings and will help repositories holding security policies and the Kafka-based consensus
in differentiating between the fake videos and the original video cost- algorithm. Smart contract chain code is used for registration, query, and
modification of identity information. In addition to this, the proposed
effectively. In particular, it includes six participants; a control room
approach is evaluated in comparison to the existing approach. On the
manager (CRM): To ensure the operator operates all devices, control
other side, Ferreira et al. [141] proposed an approach to improve the
room supervisors (CRS): who manage all devices in line, operators:
registration and authentication of IoT devices in smart city applica-
who perform proactive and reactive surveillance, police officers (POs):
tions. In particular, the authors developed API gateways and network
manages police radio, police control room operators (PCROs): commu-
gateways to identify and authorize messages. Authors have proposed
nicates CCTV command room operatives and local authority staff (LAS):
HTTP API gateways, edge computing, network gateways, and fog com-
manages police radio to communicate CCTV command room.
puting. Smart contracts are responsible for registering IoT devices and
Data Sharing: Cha et al. [138] discussed the challenges being faced
associating them with their respective owners.
during public cloud storage and how BC and secret sharing can resolve
Table 8, summarizes the work done in the BC-smart city use case.
the personal information sharing issue. The authors also highlighted the
advantages provided by the proposed system such as a large amount 3.3.3. Summary
of data can be stored on an external cloud service provider (CSP), Smart city paves the foundation for global urbanization where
resolving privacy issues that occur in CSP, and data can be restored emerging technologies are used to offer its citizens effortless services
and verified for integrity. The proposed architecture uses consortium such as smart transportation, smart governance, smart healthcare, and
BC and a secret sharing algorithm for managing user data from CSPs. smart education. To provide such services the role of IoT is considered
The proposed approach includes mainly five steps; data gathering, to be significant. Despite the numerous advantages of IoT-based smart
processing, data transaction, secret sharing, and data reconstruction. cities, it faces some challenges like privacy, security, centralization, and
Moreover, compared and analyzed the proposed system in terms of the denial of service that are preventing faster adaptation of smart cities.
AES-128 encryption algorithm and the execution speed. Along with this These challenges can be resolved by combining BC with IoT-smart
also discussed how it provides security in the smart city use case. homes. BC offers irreversible transactions, distributed and decentral-
Energy Management: Khattak et al. [139] proposed a BC-based ized architecture, and non-repudiation, to its users. Integrating BC with
application for the automatic exchange of electricity between residents. a smart city offers lower administrative costs, reduces corruption, and
The price is calculated by the admin (legal centralized authority). The provides a platform for integrated documents. Authors have worked
author has highlighted the application of BC in managing energy in in numerous directions i.e., security and privacy, data sharing, trust-
smart cities. Discussed the automatic bidding of supply and demand worthiness, energy management, and authorization. For data sharing

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Table 8
Summary of related work in BC-smart city.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Biswas et al. [133] Proposed a security framework for a Uses the Ethereum platform which – – – ✓ ✓
smart city by integrating BC with smart provides smart contract functionalities,
devices for secure communication. suggested to use of private ledgers to
ensure scalability, performance, and
security for real-time applications.
Sharma et al. [126] Presented a new approach for smart city, Uses a private Ethereum BC network, ✓ ✓ – – ✓
integrating software-defined networking memory-hardened PoW scheme called
and BC technologies and offering low Itsuku PoW, and Argon2 hashing
latency and real-time processing. technique. Also, analyze the performance
in terms of hash rate and block size.
Rahman et al. [134] Put forward a BC-based infrastructure to Uses permissioned private Ethereum and ✓ ✓ – – ✓
provide security and privacy-protected Hyperledger BC with IPFS as off-chain
smart contracts for IoT-enabled sharing solutions, MEC, and AI. Along with this
services in smart cities. uses the Amazon AWS platform and
SHA 256 hashing algorithm.
Khan et al. [137] Proposed a BC-based approach to ensure Uses Hyperledger Fabric, private BC. No ✓ ✓ – – ✓
that the stored recordings are genuine consensus algorithm is used, instead,
and help in differentiating between validation peers are nominated by the
original and fake videos. admin for validation purposes.
Khattak et al. [139] Suggested an intelligent BC-based Uses open source BC i.e. hyperledger ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
application for energy management in fabric framework, cloud for permanent
smart cities. data storage, and smart contract to
make sure that transaction is valid.
Zhang et al. [135] Presented a lightweight data consensus Uses proposed lightweight data blocks – – – – ✓
algorithm based on BC technology for consensus algorithm.
secure transmission in IoT for smart
cities.
Kumar et al. [136] Proposed a BC and machine Uses Ethereum BC with SHA-512 ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
learning-enabled framework for smart hashing approach, enhanced proof of
cities named as trustworthy privacy work consensus algorithm, solidity
preserving secured framework (TP2SF). language, and IPFS version 0.4.19.
Cha et al. [138] Proposed an approach by integrating BC Uses consortium BC with a secret – ✓ ✓ – ✓
with the cloud for protecting personal sharing algorithm. Block data is stored
information and secret sharing using a chain to maintain data integrity.
algorithm. Finally, the performance is analyzed in
terms of the AES-128 encryption
algorithm and execution speed, privacy,
integrity, efficiency, scalability, and
decentralization.
Esposito et al. [140] Proposed a BC-enabled approach for Used Hyperledger Fabric BC platform ✓ ✓ – – ✓
authentication and authorization policies with Kafka-based consensus algorithm.
in smart cities and integrated it with Analyze the proposed approach in terms
FIWARE. of latency and throughput.
Ferreira et al. [141] Proposed an approach for registration Uses Ethereum BC, a smart contract ✓ – – – ✓
and authentication for applications used written using solidity language
for a smart city. (responsible for registering IoT devices
and associating them). NodeJs is used
for IoT device management

authors have used external cloud storage, consortium BC with a secret Phases involved in the supply chain of any product are raw material,
sharing algorithm. While for energy management and authentication & transportation, manufacturing, shipment, wholesalers, retailers, and
authorization, permissioned BC platform hyper ledger fabric was used. consumers [142]. It is estimated that the worldwide supply chain
On the other side, authors preferred private BC with a PoW consensus market will expand at a rate of 87% and by the end of the year 2023,
algorithm, digital signatures, hashing, and smart contracts to attain
it will rise from $45 million to $3,314.6 million [143]. A product
better privacy and security. Still, there is some future direction that
is a combination of different resources provided by possibly different
needs further attention. Some of them are electricity distribution among
the residents can be improved, in real-time data sharing distributed manufacturers across different geographic locations. Because of the
sharing algorithm need to be more secure, load balancing is another lack of transparency in the traditional supply chain many times low-
important concern, various emerging technologies can be merged like quality products are counterfeited with the original product. Some
edge and deep leaning with BC enabled smart city. BC-IoT-driven smart other challenges faced by conventional supply chains are lack of end-
city offers innumerable opportunities. Yet some challenges are typically to-end visibility, lack of complete trust, ineffective information flow,
faced such as massive data storage, scalability, a large number of and lack of advance technologies [144]. According to the report of
simultaneous users, and chances of centralization. Microsoft out of 408 organizations in 64 countries, 69% of them lack
3.4. Supply chain and logistics full visibility in their supply chain and 65% of them have experienced
disruption in the supply chain [143]. According to a report by Scarano,
A supply chain means it is a logical chain of all the different 70,000 consumers signed a petition that urged large companies to
stakeholders involved in the different phases of the supply chain. improvise their supply chain transparency [143].

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Fig. 10. Application of blockchain in supply chain & logistics (food supply chain) [124].

BC integrated IoT can transform the landscape of supply chain and visibility, and suffers with single point of failure [152]. To
and logistics by instilling complete visibility, traceability, trust, dispute maintain the integrity of the product and supply chain, records
settlement, automation, and auditibility [145]. By using BC not only the must be tamper-proof, so that the integrity of the food history
transparency and the security but also the physical flow of the product is maintained [153]. Also, traceability brings assurance to food
also increases as decision-making becomes quick [142]. Traceability quality and safety. To achieve all these discussed features, BC is
is very crucial in the food and agriculture sector because it helps in expected to play a cardinal role.
providing information about the entire food life cycle to ensure the
quality of the food [146]. Through e-commerce websites, packed foods 3.4.2. Related work
were delivered and consumers need to pay for food items without The research works related to supply chain and logistics have been
having any food quality information, and packed foods are more sensi- discussed under different categories which are discussed as follows:
tive to environmental conditions, and sometimes deterioration of food Credit Evaluation: Mao et al. [154] proposed a BC-based credit
occurs [146]. The typical supply chain process focuses mainly on the evaluation system for the food supply chain to improve supervision
origin of the raw material but today the scope has expanded from and management. By using BC, traders are accountable for all their
origin to end customer. In this context, BC-enabled framework can actions, which is known as provenance in BC. The proposed approach
be build, which can potentially offer access to the required data at is a combination of BC technology and a deep learning model to
every touchpoint [67]. Furthermore, because of the distributed and collect and analyze the credit evaluation of traders. The system gathers
decentralized nature of BC, all the stakeholders in a supply chain credit evaluation text from traders by smart contracts on the BC and is
network can immutably view and access the data stored on the dis- analyzed directly by a deep learning network named Long Short Term
tributed ledger. Thus, BC allows users to securely, transparently, and Memory (LSTM).
trustlessly build a flexible and resilient supply chain [147]. Walmart Payment: Viriyasitavat et al. [155] put forward an approach for
and Kroger are the first companies who have implemented BC-based flexibility and smooth flow of cash and payments and improve the
supply chains [148]. Some of the commercial implementations of BC efficiency of financial transactions using BC technology and smart
in the supply chain are IBM Blockchain-TradeLens, which mainly focus contracts. The proposed approach was explained using the proposed
on logistics, OriginTrail, to bring transparency to the international cryptocurrency Future Unspent Transactions Output (FUTXO). The pro-
supply chain from 2013 to let its users know more about their food posed approach uses Blockchain technology, smart contracts, match-
product and Blockverify, an anti-counterfeit which brings transparency ing algorithms, and off-chain verification with the PBFT consensus
in the supply chain (especially used in diamonds, pharmaceuticals, and algorithm.
electronic industries) [87]. TradeLens is a joint venture of IBM and Monitoring: Weber et al. [156] presented the use of BC and its
Maersk (largest container shipping company) [149], where multiple smart contracts in collaborative process execution and applies it in
parties can interact with each other and can access real-time shipping three different use cases i.e supply chain, incident management, and
data [143]. Fig. 10, shows the application of BC in the supply chain of insurance claim handling. Moreover, authors highlighted the features
drugs. of BC like decentralization since using BC so that no central authority
is required but trust between the involved parties remains intact. For
3.4.1. Applications of blockchain in supply chain and logistics implementing proof of concept, authors used Ethereum BC platform,
• Pharmaceutical supply chain - Drug counterfeiting is a most smart contracts, and off-chain storage.
common problem that not only affects human lives but also eco- Double Chain: Leng et al. [157] proposed a public BC for an
nomic loss to health sector. According to a report by WHO every agriculture supply chain using double chain architecture. One is the
year 30% of the drugs sold in the market are counterfeit [150]. user information chain and the second is the transaction chain. User
Blockchain provides traceability capabilities to verify the drugs, information is recorded in the user information chain which ensures au-
so that the quality is not compromised [67]. By implementing thenticity, integrity, and privacy, and all the transaction data is stored
a better system for drugs traceability, will help in protecting using the transaction chain which ensures authenticity, integrity, and
patients from using fake medicines [151]. openness. The key benefits of using a double chain are any node can
• Food supply chain - Food supply chain is one of the biggest sup- view the resources without knowing the private information, reduces
ply chains. It suffers with adulteration of food due to which health the redundant information, and business expansion can be easily im-
and societal issues are on rise. So it is critical to find a way to keep plemented between platforms and financial institutions. Interestingly,
an eye on each phase from food cultivation to consumption. Con- authors proposed their own consensus algorithm which they claim to
ventional supply chains face difficulty in ensuring transparency work efficiently for agriculture BC.

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Real time tracking: Helo et al. [158] proposed a project known the benefits of integrating BC-IoT such as freight tracking, temperature
as real-time supply chain architecture (RTSC) for real-time tracking control, carrier authentication, and fast delivery through continuous
and tracing of the supply chain using RFID, IoT, and BC. RFID and monitoring. In particular, the authors discussed the two case studies
IoT are used for user interface and to provide real-time information to highlight the role of BC and IoT in the supply chain. Agrawal
and BC is used to verify the authenticity of transactions and provide et al. [163] in 2021 proposed a BC-driven supply chain traceability
a chain of immutable transactions. The proposed approach uses the system that uses distributed ledger for storage and authentication, in
Ethereum BC platform and PoW consensus algorithm. DApps are used the textile and clothing industry, and explained the proposed approach
to develop the front end using HTML and the back end using solidity at an organizational and operational level. In particular, the authors
smart contract and interaction between the front end and back end was presented a use case of the organic cotton supply chain through a mass
done using web3.js. Stakeholders involved in the supply chain can track balancing validation mechanism. The proposed approach uses private
and trace data about the shipped items. The proposed system provides BC, proof of work consensus algorithm, and public and private key pairs
a connection between transport companies and tracking devices. Along generated using the RSA algorithm. Lou et al. [164] proposed a BC-
with this, presented the benefits of the proposed system. based framework named SESCF to resolve the challenges being faced by
Traceability: Tian et al. [159], Tian et al. [160], Caro et al. [153], the supply chain such as information flow, logistics, and capital flow.
Rovzman et al. [161], Tsang et al. [146], Humayun et al. [162], The proposed approach uses BC, smart contracts, RFID, and payment
Agrawal et al. [163] and Lou et al. [164], worked in the same direction channels. BC and smart contract ensures information symmetry, RFID
i.e., to track and trace the products in supply chain, which offers open- ensures the unique identity of goods and the payment channel solves
ness, transparency, reliability and trusted environment. Authors Tian the issue of a payment default. The proposed approach helps in improv-
et al. [159] proposed a food supply chain traceability system using RFID ing the efficiency of the supply chain by putting goods transactions on
and BC technology to improve food safety and quality. RFID technology the chain and capital transactions off the chain. The proposed approach
is used for data acquisition, circulation, and sharing, and BC technology follows a layered architecture; user layer, transaction layer, and BC
is used to ensure that the information shared and published is reliable layer.
and authentic. The benefits of using BC technology are information Performance Evaluation: Bamakan et al. [166] proposed an ap-
is transparent and open, no requirement for centralized organization, proach to evaluate the performance of the supply chain, save com-
and irreversible transactions. In 2017, Tian et al. [160] put forward a puting time, and speed up information flow. The proposed framework
new decentralized traceability system which is an extension of [159], includes six layers; data layer (system‘s data input sources), connec-
based on HACCP (Hazard analysis and critical control points), IoT, and tion layer (necessary infrastructure to receive real-time information),
BC technology. It includes mainly five links; production, processing, blockchain layer (exploit data in conjunction with ANFIS model), smart
warehousing, distribution, and retail. It uses IoT (RFID, WSN, GPS) to layer (smart contracts), ANFIS (adaptive network-based fuzzy inter-
collect and transfer, and BigchainDB for storing and managing data. face system) layer (evaluates SSC performance) and application layer
Caro et al. [153] proposed a decentralized traceability approach for (performance management). With the help of IoT, BC, and ANFIS, a
the agriculture food supply chain by integrating BC with IoT, known performance management system is created.
as AgriBlockIoT. As it directly provides critical information on pro- Security: Song et al. [165] proposed an approach using IoT and BC
duction and consumption, it ensures transparency and auditable assets. technology to form supply chains effectively. In particular, includes an
The main modules included are API, controller, and Blockchain. Also access control framework, an access control policy determined by all
deployed the proposed system for the use case ‘from farm to fork using members jointly, and BC technology to ensure all processing is trusted
two different BC platforms Ethereum and Hyperledger Sawtooth. Both and valid. The access control list has two modules; the registration
of these provide a different level of customization as Ethereum works module (for information registration) and the inspection module (for
with a single transaction while Hyperledger allows custom transactions. judging misbehavior). Moreover, the authors have used a backup peer
A comparison of the performance of both the BC platforms is shown in mechanism, internal data isolation, and transmission method to ensure
terms of latency, CPU, and network usage and results show Hyperledger availability.
has better performance as compared to Ethereum. Trust Model: Al et al. [167] proposed a BC-driven trust model
In 2019, Rovzman et al. [161] proposed a concept to integrate which simplifies data sharing and reduces computational, latency, and
BC and IoT and implemented it for supply chains. One of the crucial storage requirements. It resolves trust challenges between supply chain
features provided by this approach is modularity which means any parties and maintains data integrity. In particular, it includes three
number of different types of nodes can be linked. Some of the core modules; data (data produced by sensors within the supply chain
nodes are the genesis node, service node, user node, interface node, and trade events in between its nodes), IoT network (authenticates
agreement node, and mapping node. For validation smart contracts and supervises the messages and node), and BC and supply chain
are implemented using the Rinkeby test network. Tsang et al. [146] (communicates with each other through series of queries).
discussed the issues in the conventional supply chain like reliabil- Table 9 summarizes the work done in the BC-supply chain use case.
ity, scalability, and information accuracy, and suggested how BC can
mitigate these challenges. Proposes a BC -IoT-based food traceability 3.4.3. Summary
system (BIFTS) for traceability in the supply chain. IoT is used for The supply chain is the chain of stakeholders involved from initial
monitoring applications, collected data is stored using a cloud database production stage to final consumption of any product. It aims to provide
and the food life cycle is managed by using BC. It is a lightweight quality compliance, eliminate of communication gaps, optimize ship-
and vaporized hybrid approach of BC and cloud. For consensus, it uses ping, and customer satisfaction. However, there are some challenges
proof of supply chain share (PoSCS) to mint or forges the blocks and with the existing system such as the availability of resources, limited
SHA-256 for hashing. The benefits of using the proposed approach transparency, traceability, trust issues, and stakeholder management.
are secure and reliable food traceability, lightweight and vaporized BC has been leveraged to overcome these challenges, such as decen-
design, and intelligent food quality evaluation. Authors also highlighted tralized collective maintenance, matching between supply and demand
the challenges in implementing BIFTS in the supply chain like human of resources, verifiability, and identifying counterfeit products. To ex-
errors, honesty, integrity, and open-mindedness for all stakeholders to plore the applicability of BC in supply chain and management various
adopt the system. research has been done. In particular, researchers have made efforts
In 2020, Humayun et al. [162] proposed a framework by integrating to monitor, track and trace the supply chain and ensure smooth flow
BC with IoT, named BCTLF for logistics and transportation systems to of payment. Especially for real-time tracking and monitoring, various
make the system more convenient and transparent. Authors highlighted researchers have used Ethereum BC platform with smart contracts,

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Table 9
Summary of related work in BC-supply chain & logistics.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Weber et al. [156] Proposed a BC-based technique to Uses Ethereum blockchain, smart – ✓ ✓ – –
address the lack of trust challenge in the contracts written in solidity language,
collaborative business process. Proof of concept consensus, and
off-chain data storage.
Tian et al. [159] Proposed a supply chain traceability Proposed system uses RFID and BC ✓ ✓ – – –
system that covers the whole process of technology. Also analyzed were the
data gathering to information advantages (like the benefit of tracking
management of every link involved in and traceability, enhanced creditability,
the agricultural supply chain. and fight against fake products) and
disadvantages (like high cost, and
immaturity of BC), of using RFID and
BC technology.
Tian et al. [160] Proposed a traceability system based on Uses RFID for labeling the products, ✓ – – – –
HACCP that uses BC and IoT to improve digitally signed the smart contract for
the efficiency, openness, neutrality, the exchange of information stored on
reliability, and transparency in the food BigchainDB.
supply chain.
Caro et al. [153] Proposed an approach by integrating BC Deployed the use case using two BC – – – ✓ –
with IoT for traceability of the platforms i.e. Hyperledger sawtooth and
agriculture food supply chain known as Ethereum and evaluated the
AgriBlockIoT. performance in terms of latency, CPU,
and network usage. Concluded that
Hyperledger sawtooth shows
comparatively better performance.
Leng et al. [157] Proposed an approach for an agriculture Uses public BC double chain architecture ✓ ✓ – – ✓
supply chain based on double chain i.e. user information chain and the
architecture. transaction chain with its proposed
consensus algorithm.
Mao et al. [154] Proposed a credit evaluation system for Uses IoT and BC with smart contracts ✓ ✓ – ✓ ✓
different stakeholders in the food supply known as chain code. The system adopts
chain, to strengthen the effectiveness of Hyperledger fabric 1.0 consortium BC.
supervision and management.
Rovzman et al. [161] Presented an approach for integrating Uses IoT as a communicating means for ✓ – – – ✓
BC and IoT technologies that supports nodes and BC is used for listing the
modularity which means any number of services and information and for
different types of nodes can join. validation uses the Rinkeby test network.
Tsang et al. [146] Presented an overview of the food Uses IoT technology for environmental ✓ ✓ – – ✓
supply chain, challenges in existing food monitoring, collected data is stored
traceability systems, and benefits of using a cloud database and associated
integrating BC and IoT. Proposes a keys, and the life cycle is maintained
BC-IoT-based food traceability system for using BC with hash algorithm SHA-256,
managing perishable food. to store the fingerprints of the block.
POSCS (Proof of Supply Chain Share)
consensus algorithm is used.
Humayun et al. [162] Proposed a framework named BCTLF, Uses BC and IoT for intelligent logistics – ✓ – – ✓
for smart logistics and transportation. and transportation systems. Data is
collected using sensors and stored in the
distributed blockchain ledger.
Helo et al. [158] Proposed an approach by integrating BC, Uses the Ethereum BC platform and ✓ – – – –
IoT, and RFID for real-time tracking and PoW consensus algorithm. DApp is used
tracing of the supply chain. to develop the front end using HTML
and the back end using solidity smart
contracts and interaction between the
front end and back end was done using
web3.js
Agrawal et al. [163] Proposed a BC-driven supply chain Proposed approach uses private BC, ✓ – ✓ ✓ ✓
traceability system that uses distributed proof of work consensus algorithm,
ledger for storage and authentication, in public, and private key pair generated
the textile and clothing industry. using RSA algorithm.
Viriyasitavat et al. [155] Proposed an architecture based on BC Uses Blockchain technology, smart ✓ – – – –
and smart contracts for a smooth flow contracts, matching algorithm, and
of payments, to improve the efficiency off-chain verification with PBFT
of the financial transactions. consensus algorithm.

(continued on next page)

double chain, RFID, IoT, and Hyperledger BC. For hashing, SHA-256 of the consensus algorithm. Quality management, risk management,
and consensus PoW is preferred. Nonetheless there are many aspects and e-commerce are other significant areas to be considered in the
which still need dedicated research efforts, for instance, analyzing scal- supply chain. Apart from information flow, BC and IoT enabled supply
ability and interoperability for real-time use cases, speed, and efficiency chain can be built that manages material flow, capital flow, value flow,

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Table 9 (continued).
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Lou et al. [164] Proposed a BC-based framework named Proposed approach uses Ethereum ✓ – – – –
SESCF to resolve the challenges being consortium BC, solidity language for
faced by the supply chain. smart contracts, RFID, and payment
channels.
Song et al. [165] Proposed a framework to form a supply Uses access control list, double chain ✓ – – – ✓
chain effectively using IoT and BC. structured consortium BC with two
different BC techniques; hyperledger
fabric and ethereum.
Bamakan et al. [166] Proposed a framework to evaluate the Uses fuzzy logic, AI, IoT, BC, and big ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
performance of the supply chain. data.
Al et al. [167] Proposed a BC-driven trust model which Uses IoT, BC, and compared it with the ✓ – – – –
simplifies data sharing and reduces PoW consensus algorithm.
computational, latency, and storage
requirements.

and risk flow [146]. Lastly, interoperability, massive data handling, the unavailability of charging stations can be minimized. In addi-
throughput enhancement are few more areas which need to be worked tion to energy management, identity management of autonomous
upon when considering BC and IoT enabled supply chain and logistics. EVs is yet another area where BC can be leveraged [173]. Share
and charge are the BC-based platforms that allow P2P energy
3.5. Autonomous vehicle trading among EVs and private charging stations [56].
• Smart Insurance - Today insurance companies offer flexible
Vehicles are becoming smarter as they can not only gather infor- insurance which is based on various data collected from the vehi-
mation with the help of the sensors installed in them but can also cles and evaluation of driving behavior like speed, and breaking
communicate that information over the Internet and can act accord- pattern [172]. In this context, BC enabled vehicles can provide se-
ing to the received response [168]. An autonomous vehicle refers cure, distributed, privacy protected exchange of data. Moreover,
to a connected, smart, and driverless vehicle that can communicate data is shared on the basis of demand not continuously [172].
or exchange data with other vehicles, city infrastructure, and online Since the data stored on BC is tamper-proof and distributed, users
services or applications and is traveling without humans controlling are not able to alter it, neither for insurance claim fraud nor for
the vehicle [169]. City infrastructure includes traffic lights, road work, inflating insurance premium [174]. Smart contracts running on
route planning, etc. Autonomous vehicles are a network of a vehicle to top of BC can enforce automatic claim settlement in transparent
vehicles (V2V), vehicles to infrastructure (V2I), vehicles to the roadside and trustless manner [175].
unit (v2R), and vehicles to pedestrians (v2P) [145].
The concept of driverless vehicles was first introduced in 1920 3.5.2. Related work
[170]. The level of automation varies from zero to full automation, The research works related to autonomous vehicles have been dis-
according to NHTSA, which has classified automation into five levels, cussed under different categories as follows:
(i) no automation, (ii) function-specific automation, (iii) combined Payment: Jamil et al. [176] proposed a BC-based privacy-preserving
function automation, (iv) limited self-driving automation, and (v) fully approach for automatic payment for fueling of smart cars without
autonomous vehicle [170]. According to a report, the smart vehicles human intervention, ensuring privacy, transparency, and trust. In par-
market will be worth US$87 billion and by the end of the year 2040, ticular, authors used Hyperledger fabric permissioned BC (to provide
every four out of ten vehicles could be autonomous [169]. Because modular, scalable, and secure foundation), off-chain storage, a smart
of human errors, thousands of deaths happened each year which can contracts written using solidity language, an elliptic curve to generate
be reduced to zero by using AVs [169]. smart insurance, and self- public and private keys, Diffie Hellman key exchange. Their proposed
owning car, are the application of autonomous vehicles. Some practical approach includes services like data sharing, smart pump management,
implementations of self-driving vehicles are La‘Zooz, a ride-sharing secure payment transaction, smart car management, and user identity
application, a blockchain version of Uber [171], and also Uber has management. Finally, the authors analyzed the performance in terms of
ordered 50,000 SUVs to deploy fully self-driving vehicles over the latency, resource consumption, and transactions per second using the
street. Hyperledger caliper.
Implementing autonomous vehicles will help in reducing accidents, Data Storage: Yin et al. [177] proposed a BC-based incremental
reducing traffic congestion, increasing lane capacity, and efficient park- update system for data storage, improving data records and update
ing. However, realizing these benefits from autonomous vehicles re- efficiency. Their proposed system includes only the data storage stage
quires large exchange of small data and real-time processing. Moreover, and update stage. Copies of the data are stored on different indepen-
the data exchanged by these smart vehicles leads to new privacy dent sources and their index is stored on-chain, which enhances data
challenges [172]. BC and IoT enabled autonomous vehicles will be able reliability. Along with that, a PoW algorithm is designed to improve
to handle these challenges. transaction efficiency and reduces system security risk. For calculating
the secret key authors used the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm
3.5.1. Applications of blockchain in autonomous vehicles (ECDSA) and SHA 256 for hashing.
• Electric Vehicle Charging - The increase in electric vehicles Communication: Singh et al. [178] highlighted the issues in in-
(EVs) has resulted in high demand for fast charging stations. In telligent vehicle communication using a traditional approach such as
this context, smart vehicles connected to the owner’s smartphone trust, data accuracy, and reliability. To overcome these challenges,
can provide pro-active services. If the travel pattern is securely the authors proposed a reward-based approach known as Intelligent
stored on BC then charging can be done automatically at regular Vehicle-Trust Point (IV-TP) for communication using BC technology.
intervals. Moreover, based on the secure data stored on BC, EVs The proposed approach stores all IV-TP details of every vehicle and
can be provided with the most efficient charging cycle [172] and is accessed by IVs. IV-TP provides fast and secure communication

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between IVs. It includes three basic technologies; connected devices, smart vehicles using BC. Their framework is based on a double-tier ar-
vehicular cloud computing, and BC. chitecture which includes initialization operation (for creating a record
Forensic Application: Oham et al. [179] and Cebe et al. [168], of vehicles for authentication) and challenge-response mechanism (to
both worked towards forensic aspects of autonomous vehicles. Oham query the integrity of the vehicle’s network). The proposed frame-
et al. [179] proposed a distributed forensic framework using per- work includes entities like verifiers (legal authorities) and proposers
missioned BC for the auto insurance liability model for autonomous (vehicle manufacturers, service technicians). Transactions are secured
vehicles. Their framework provides untampered evidence for automatic using SHA-256, off-chain storage, asymmetric encryption, and digital
processing of insurance claims and settling disputes. Thus, the frame- signatures. No consensus algorithm is used, instead an appendable
work puts an end to the chances of a single point of trust and allows block concept is used where transactions are added by the verified
multiple participants to simultaneously agree on the evidence needed block owner. The authors analyzed the performance of their proposed
to process claims. Authors also presented a security analysis of the framework in terms of overhead, the time required, and storage space
proposed framework. While Cebe et al. [168] proposed a framework to required. The results showed that their proposed approach is resilient
manage the collected data, identify faulty parts, and solve the disputes against various security attacks such as Sybil attacks, fake data, and
in case of an accident with the help of integrating vehicular public key masquerade attacks. Authors also discussed the applicability of the
infrastructure (VPKI) with permissioned BC. Their work includes three proposed approach in various use cases such as vehicular forensic, trust
types of data; event data, diagnosis data, and maintenance data which management, and secure vehicular communication. In 2022, Tyagi
is stored using the cloud, and respective hashes are stored in BC. The et al. [183] proposed an approach to secure users’ personal information
proposed system connects all the stakeholders involved from vehicle in smart vehicles using BC and IPFS. Table 10, summarizes the work
manufacturers to customers and offers traceable, privacy-aware post- done in the BC-autonomous vehicle use case.
accident analysis with minimum processing overhead. Moreover, the
proposed approach includes a fragmented ledger that stores data such 3.5.3. Summary
as maintenance information, history, and car diagnosis report. Autonomous vehicles are connected, smart, and driverless vehicles
Security & Privacy: Yuan et al. [171], Dorri et al. [172], that can sense, communicate and exchange data with other vehicles or
Singh et al. [180], Rathee et al. [181], Oham et al. [182] and Tyagi infrastructure. Autonomous vehicles are anticipated to enhance road
safety, reduce the number of road accidents, minimize driving errors,
et al. [183], worked towards improving security and privacy in Au-
reduce traffic congestion, and enable stress-free parking. For providing
tonomous vehicle using BC. In 2016, Yuan et al. [171] provided
such services, IoT is an integral part of an autonomous vehicle. The
an overview of BC technology and its potential in a transportation
existing approach faces some challenges such as centralization, trust
system. To resolve security and privacy-related challenges, the authors
issues, privacy and security and the user‘s control over exchanged data
proposed a seven-layer BC-enabled intelligent transportation system
is less. Combining BC with IoT-enabled autonomous vehicles brings
(B2ITS) and explained it using a case study of a ride-sharing service.
opportunities such as data integrity, data sharing, proof of delivery,
Seven layers are the physical layer (which includes physical enti-
unaltered records, transparency, and reliability. To explore the appli-
ties such as devices, and vehicles), the data layer (which includes
cations of BC in an autonomous vehicle, numerous research works
chained data blocks using techniques such as asymmetric encryption,
have been done in different directions like payments, data storage,
time stamping, hashing, and Merkle tree), the network layer (includes
communication, forensic application, and security and privacy. To
distributed networking, data forwarding, and verification), consen-
achieve security and privacy, BC, SHA-256, off-chain storage, asym-
sus layer (includes all possible consensus algorithm), incentive layer
metric encryption, and digital signatures are used. Hyperledger Fabric,
(includes incentives and rewards), contract layer (includes scripts,
off-chain storage, smart contracts, elliptic curve, and Diffie Hellman
algorithm, and smart contracts) and application layer (includes various
key exchange are used for executing payments. Apart from the fea-
application scenarios).
tures offered by BC, there are some challenges in integrating BC with
In 2017, Dorri et al. [172] discussed the conventional methods used Autonomous Vehicles, such as high infrastructural cost, massive data
in smart vehicles and highlighted the challenges namely centralization, storage, scalability, integration into the existing system, and avoiding
lack of privacy, and safety threats, and suggested BC as a potential chances of centralization. Some of the research directions for BC-IoT en-
solution to all these challenges. Authors proposed a solution based on abled autonomous vehicles are how to achieve high throughput without
BC for automotive security and privacy. Stakeholders involved in the compromising security and privacy, how BC-IoT autonomous vehicles
chain such as smart vehicles, equipment manufacturers, and service can used for accident reconstruction, multiple vehicle communication
providers form an overlay network to communicate with each other. scenarios, and privacy of smart vehicle when moving from one roadside
Communications are encrypted using asymmetric encryption. Discussed to another. System intelligence can be increased by adopting deep and
some of the applications of the proposed architecture like remote soft- reinforcement learning.
ware updates, insurance, electric vehicle, smart charging services, and
car-sharing service. Furthermore, compared it with the conventional 3.6. Smart grid
method in terms of security and privacy. In 2018, Singh et al. [180] pro-
vided a brief overview of BC technology, its advantages like security, A smart grid is also known as a smart power grid, intelligent grid,
transparency, reliability, and its application for an intelligent vehicle. or future grid. A conventional power grid has to simply carry power
Moreover, the authors proposed a BC-driven approach for Intelligent from central generators and supply it to users/consumers [184]. In
Vehicle communication, which ensures trustworthiness among vehicles contrast, a smart grid involves use of state of the art sensing methods,
and evaluated the performance using real-time traffic scenarios. communication technologies, interconnected power systems, advanced
Rathee et al. [181] in 2019 highlighted the security-related chal- control and optimization techniques, smart metering, and integration of
lenges in smart sensors of connected vehicles. They proposed a security microgrids and other decentralized sources of renewable energy [185,
mechanism for connected autonomous vehicles services framework us- 186]. Nowadays, solar panel installation has seen significant growth
ing the BC technique to ensure transparency and security. Initially, data which has resulted in individual homeowners installing solar panels
is stored using an ordinary database and then stored permanently on and contributing excess energy generated from solar panels to the
BC to track each activity. The authors analyzed the proposed approach larger electric grids [187]. Due to variable energy consumption pattern,
using NS2 simulator against the existing approaches and the results some users’ energy generation can be more than required and at the
showed a 79% success rate. In 2021, Oham et al. [182] proposed a same time other users may be facing insufficient energy supplies. Thus,
framework for decentralized security known as B-FERL for securing the former can trade their excess energy to latter [188].

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Table 10
Summary of related work in BC-autonomous vehicle.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Yuan et al. [171] Proposes a BC-based seven-layer ITS Uses BC technology, SHA-256 for – ✓ – – ✓
framework (B2ITS) for the establishment hashing, Merkle tree, time stamping, and
of a secured, trusted, and decentralized PoS consensus algorithm.
autonomous ecosystem.
Dorri et al. [172] Proposes a BC-based architecture to Uses public BC, each vehicle is equipped ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
enhance the privacy of users and with WVI (wireless vehicle interface)
security of the vehicular ecosystem. and local storage to store sensitive data.
Singh et al. [178] Briefly introduces intelligent vehicles Uses three basic technologies i.e. ✓ – – – ✓
and propose a reward-based approach communication network, vehicular cloud
for communication between intelligent computing, and blockchain technology.
vehicles using blockchain. Also uses the PoD (proof of driving)
consensus algorithm.
Oham et al. [179] Brief overview of a liability attribution Uses permissioned BC, public key ✓ ✓ – – ✓
model and proposes a blockchain-based infrastructure to issue digital identities
framework for providing untampered for authenticated and authorized
pieces of evidence for liability communication, digital signatures, and
attribution and adjudication. data stored in the blockchain.
Cebe et al. [168] Proposed a blockchain-based framework Uses permissioned blockchain, PBFT ✓ ✓ – – ✓
for vehicular forensics which manages consensus algorithm, and cloud for data
the collected vehicle-related data for storage while their hash is stored on BC.
trustless, and privacy-aware
post-accident analysis with minimal
storage and processing overhead.
Singh et al. [180] Proposed a BC-enabled intelligent Uses two blockchain mechanisms, one is – – – – ✓
vehicle communication approach for LDB and the other is MB. When LDB is
trusted and secured communication. filled then it is overwritten in a FIFO
manner and MB is implemented using
Merkle Tree, PoW consensus algorithm.
Rathee et al. [181] Proposed a BC-based framework to Uses blockchain technology to record ✓ – – – ✓
address security challenges in smart each activity, and analyzed the
sensors of connected vehicles. performance using an NS2 simulator.
Yin et al. [177] Proposed a BC-based incremental update Uses BC, data and index storage, ✓ – ✓ – –
system for data storage. incremental data update adaptive PoW
algorithm, elliptic curve digital signature
algorithm (ECDSA), and SHA256 for
hashing.
Jamil et al. [176] Proposed a BC-based privacy-preserving Uses Hyperledger fabric, Hyperledger ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
approach for automatic payment of composer, docker composer, docker
fueling of smart cars without human engine, CLI tool, off-chain storage, smart
intervention. contract, elliptic curve to generate
public and private keys, and Diffie
Hellman key exchange.
Oham et al. [182] Proposed a BC-based security framework Uses double-tier blockchain-based ✓ ✓ – – ✓
known as B-FERL for securing smart architecture, SHA-256 for hashing,
vehicles. asymmetric encryption and digital
signatures, and appendable block
concept.
Tyagi et al. [183] Proposed an approach to secure smart Uses BC technology and Inter planetary ✓ – – – ✓
vehicles (preserve user‘s personal file system (IPFS) for storage.
information) using BC technology.

Smart homes, smart buildings, and smart infrastructure, all of these trusted energy trading between two trading parties. BC has potential
collectively form a smart community [189]. All of these must be to build decentralized and secure P2P energy trading platform [145].
supported by a smart power supply. The challenges being faced by Some existing commercial implementations are PowerLedger, Banky-
conventional power supply can be reduced by Smart grid [189]. Along moon, and Brooklyn [56,87]. PowerLedger is an Australia-based startup
with this, these smart sensor-based metering systems will require less that enables owners of renewable energy sources to sell their surplus
manpower as compared to the conventional approach [56]. Some of energy [191]. Bankymoon is a South Africa-based startup, that pro-
the general challenges faced by the smart grid are the availability vides smart prepaid energy meters and supplies energy to schools and
of trusted parties for data aggregation, hiding the link between the communities who need affordable power supply [192] and Brooklyn,
user’s real identity, and pseudonym and authentication speed [189]. launched by US energy firm is the most significant implementation
Implementing BC-based smart contracts in smart grids is an opportunity of BC in P2P decentralized energy trading [56]. WePower is another
to increase the speed and security of the smart grid [190]. BC makes the Lithuania based company for energy data accounting and storage using
grid network decentralized which means the supply and distribution of smart contracts [193].
energy need not be channeled through a centralized system [56]. For
instance, users who own some form of renewable energy generation fac- 3.6.1. Applications of blockchain in smart grids
ulty such as solar panels can become producers by selling their surplus • Decentralized P2P Energy Trading- In a traditional grid net-
energy to the grid [56]. However, the challenge is to ensure secure and work, the major concern is lack of security in a transaction of

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energy and high operational costs. However, the BC-based grid the trading distribution. Moreover, their approach use consortium BC
trading infrastructure is a decentralized platform that enables to establish a secure energy trading system and smart contracts for
peer-to-peer transactions of energy [56,194,195]. Power Ledger preventing privacy leakage. It includes mainly three phases; energy
platform provides numerous energy trading applications [193]. seller initialization, B-Box operation, and buyer purchase. Evaluated
• Power Distribution and Management- BC with its strong secu- the performance in terms of privacy-preserving. In line with that, in
rity features can prevent many attacks that have been made on 2021, Guan et al. [194] proposed another approach named privacy-
the traditional power grids to manipulate the data and to have preserving blockchain energy trading scheme (PP-BCETS) based on
control of the system [56]. Moreover, BC and smart contracts can ciphertext policy attribute, exponentially improving operation effi-
enable secure, efficient and reliable management of IoT-enabled ciency. It enables direct transactions between electricity users and
distribution network in smart grids [195]. producers and helps in improving the privacy, security, and reliabil-
• Secure Metering - Meters are installed in every house to maintain ity of the energy trading process by implementing smart contracts.
the record of electricity consumed. Intruders can record and Along with that, proposed a credibility-based equity proof consensus
analyze the electricity consumption pattern and can reveal users’ algorithm to resolve low efficiency and high delay in BC. The design
details. BC with advanced cryptography methods can be used to goals of PP-BCET are privacy protection, efficiency, and anti-attack.
ensure the privacy of the information [196,197]. It includes mainly five phases; system initialization, user registration,
transaction process, building consensus, application for arbitration,
3.6.2. Related work and generating accounting node. In particular, uses an elliptic curve
The research works related to the smart grid have been discussed digital signature algorithm for generating public and private keys, SHA-
under different categories which are discussed as follows: 256, and the Ethereum BC platform. Finally, security analysis and
Grid Monitoring: Mengelkamp et al. [198] discussed smart grids performance evaluation are presented. In 2022, Mazumdar et al. [201]
and local energy markets and propose an approach based on BC, which proposed a BC-driven approach to detect energy theft in smart grid
underlines the decentralized nature of local energy markets with an neighborhood area networks along with preserving the privacy of
auction mechanism at a small level. The proposed approach consists of energy consumption data. In particular, authors have used consortium
a closed double-sided auction market, implemented using a smart con- BC hyperledger best with Proof of Authority consensus, AES256, ZK-
tract. It uses private permissioned Ethereum BC, smart contracts written STARK, RS256 digital signature, and SHA256. Furthermore, results
using solidity language, and a PoW consensus algorithm. In 2018, Gao show that the proposed approach achieves more than 98% accuracy in
et al. [196] proposed a BC-based solution for creating a system to energy theft detection. [202] proposed a solution along with dynamic
protect consumer data that is recorded and transferred through the billing and arbitration, named PPDB to reduce latency and bandwidth-
smart grids in a tamper-proof manner. Cryptographic keys are used for related issues and to improve efficiency. In particular, the author has
specific tasks such as system and data security. The proposed approach designed a four-layer data aggregation framework that uses fog nodes
includes various layers; user layer, data processing and monitoring (FNs) to collect and aggregate electricity consumption data using the
layer, registration and authentication layer, smart contract layer, smart ElGamal cryptosystem and employ distributed decryption to achieve
contract database layer, energy center layer, and data center layer. fine-grained access and bill generation based on real-time prices. Along
SHA-256 is used for hashing the blocks. Along with that, compared the with a trusted third party to arbitrate disputed bills. Further, the
proposed solution with the existing solution in terms of information comparison shows that the communication overhead is reduced by 38
sharing, efficient data manageability, data immutability, data confi- percent, and the computational efficiency is improved by 40 times.
dentiality, and data provenance. In line with that, in 2021, Naseer Control Access: Bera et al. [203] proposed a BC-based access
et al. [199] proposed a BC-enabled lightweight scheme for access control protocol named DBACP-IoTSG, for IoT-driven smart grids with-
control to ensure temper proof, trusted communication between entities out the involvement of a trusted third party, while preserving the
of the smart grid and provide a secure channel to submit transactions in anonymity and untraceable properties. In particular, uses Dolev-Yao
the network. In particular, uses the Ethereum BC platform, SHA-256 for (DY) threat model, private BC, PBFT consensus algorithm, random
key generation, elliptic curve cryptography for secure communication, numbers, and current timestamp is used to protect against the replay
and BC. Furthermore, the authors analyzed the scheme in terms of attack. Phases involved are system setup (either SHA-256/512), reg-
security and performance and the results show it is effective in terms istration of smart meters and service providers, access control, key
of computational and storage costs. management among service providers, block formation and addition in
Device Identification & Management: Wang et al. [200] put the blockchain, and new smart meters addition after initial deployment
forward an approach for the connection of IoT devices by using BC in the smart grid. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the proposed
and 5G MEC technologies. Their approach uses public and private BC approach provides better security and requires less communication and
deployed using MEC server. Authors also discussed numerous consensus computation cost.
algorithms and their usefulness in hybrid BC. The authors analyzed Charging Coordination: Baza et al. [204] proposed a BC-based
the performance of different consensus algorithms in terms of average charging coordination mechanism for energy storage units (ESUs).
computing time and average time to agreement. For defining the rules for coordination between different ESUs, smart
Privacy Preserving: Guan et al. [189] proposed a BC-based privacy- contracts written in solidity language are used, and the Ethereum BC
preserving and efficient data aggregation scheme, in which users are platform. For scheduling the charging of ESUs, a greedy algorithm
divided into different groups. Each group consists of a private BC to is used. The approach includes three phases; acquiring anonymous
record its members’ data. The proposed approach is specially designed credentials, charging request submission, and charging schedule com-
to tackle challenges like privacy, pseudonym, and speed. Their scheme putation. Finally author evaluated the proposed approach for charging
allows a user to create multiple pseudonyms to hide user identity and coordination using first come first serve (FCFS) and analyzed it in terms
bloom filter for fast authentication, to judge the validity of pseudonyms of security and privacy.
and check the existence of pseudonyms based on zero-knowledge proof. Cost Analysis: Sestrem et al. [205] proposed an architecture us-
Authors showed that their proposed scheme outperforms and meets ing BC and side chains for smart grids to make them more scalable
security requirements as compared to other popular methods. In 2019, and adaptable. It includes three BCs named BlockPRI, BlockSEC, and
Gai et al. [188] presented a BC-based approach to solve the problem BlockTST for user privacy, to store user data, and to manage and
of privacy leakage in trading functions and user privacy in a smart validate information regarding the energy trade between consumers
grid, known as the privacy-preserving blockchain-driven trading model and prosumers respectively. A Loom network, based on the side chain,
(PBT). For preserving privacy it uses a noise-based approach to hide is used to develop these BC. Loom network uses the DPOS consensus

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

algorithm. The proposed architecture includes three layers namely maintenance costs [207,209]. As the devices are interconnected, they
the user layer (registers users in the blockchain), the protocol layer share information directly and are subject to security threats [207].
(uses OSGP protocol to model data package), and the blockchain layer Because of the tamper-proof and distributed nature of BC technology,
(ensures privacy security, and trust). Moreover, evaluation was done in it can be proved as a game-changer in the IIoT domain. Some of the
terms of several transactions per second, and smart contract cost and practical implementations are, for example in the agriculture industry,
results show it is feasible for use. iGrow, which associates landowners, farmers, investors, and harvest
Authentication: In 2021, Wang et al. [206] proposed a secure, reli- purchasers to make a supply chain for organic food, and Avenues-
able, and efficient mutual authentication protocol for smart meters. The GT, which supports the commercial trade of agriculture products from
proposed approach resolves identity authentication issues by combin- farmers securely and transparently [87].
ing BC, elliptic curve cryptography, dynamic join and exit mechanism,
and batch verification. Furthermore, the authors have analyzed the 3.7.1. Applications of blockchain in IIoT
performance in terms of security and functionality, and computation • MIoT - BC can be proved as a revolution in the healthcare indus-
overhead and the results show the proposed approach is more secure try, in particular for Medical IoT (MIoT). It can be used to manage
and efficient. security, privacy, trusted ownership, authenticity, interoperabil-
Table 11, summarizes the work done in the BC-smart grid use case. ity, and autonomous cooperation between MIoT devices [74,
210].
3.6.3. Summary • Automatic and Secure Micro Payment - As we are moving
A smart grid is the transmission of power from producer to con- towards digitization and IoTized systems where automatic and
sumer without the involvement of any centralized system. It allows micro payments are the need of time. BC provides a solution to se-
monitoring of power flow from power generation to power consump- cure, privacy protected, trustless, and automatic micro payments
tion, advanced metering infrastructure, better consumer services, fraud for IoT devices [210] such as smart meters [37].
detection, technical losses, and reduces electricity theft. These services • Supply Chain Logistics - BC can help in maintaining the authen-
are provided as IoT is a significant part of the smart grid. The existing ticity and tracing the products to ensure quality of the products
grid system faces challenges like data getting stolen and a centralized from raw material to final finished goods and efficient supply of
system which leads to a single point of failure and alterations. BC the product [211].
technology helps in mitigating these issues and provides transparency • Power Industry - Integrating BC and the power industry has
and provenance, ensuring the reliability and accuracy of smart grid IoT many applications such as the trade of energy, power demand,
devices. Along with that, it offers decentralized, immutable, trusted ac- and power generation schemes that can be stored on the BC
cess control and a highly reliable system. Implementing BC to the smart network. BC reduces that extra transition cost and makes the
grid has attracted widespread attention. Researchers have worked in transition of power in a more efficient way [87].
different directions to explore the applications of BC in smart grids
and make it a more efficient solution. Several authors worked on 3.7.2. Related work
grid monitoring, device identification, privacy preservation, control The research works related to IIoT have been discussed under
access, charging coordination, and cost analysis. In their particular different categories which are discussed as follows:
work, authors have used private Ethereum BC, smart contracts, PoW Data Collection and Sharing: Manogaran et al. [212] introduce
consensus algorithm, and SHA-256 for hashing. For control access, a BC-based secured data sharing model named BSDS for inbound and
private BC with PBFT consensus algorithm while for cost analysis DPOS outbound security in data acquisition and dissemination, as BC controls
consensus algorithm is preferred. Apart from the work done, there data gathering and dissemination. Its design goal is to maximize the re-
are some areas, to be considered in the future. Transaction processing sponse rate of the industrial process by reducing false alarm progression
time and data storage can be improved, while computational overheads (FAP) in IIoT. Analysis shows that the proposed model gains a 5.67%
caused by authentication, during system initialization, can be reduced. high response rate, and reduces the failure rate by 2.14%.
Yet some challenges are being faced by BC such as high infrastructural Network Computing Service: Xu et al. [213] proposed a BC-
and development costs, scalability, chances of centralization, and an based non-repudiation service provisioning scheme for IIoT applica-
enormous amount of data generated. tions where BC is used to record evidence and a service publication
proxy and each service is delivered separately using on-chain and
3.7. Industrial IoT off-chain. Moreover, designed a service verification method based on
homomorphic hash techniques to validate services based on lightweight
Industrial IoT or industry 4.0, is a revolution in industries. Industrial on-chain evidence. Uses smart contracts to efficiently settle disputes be-
IoT is a switch from traditional industries to smart industries [87]. tween service providers and IIoT clients, homomorphic and homomor-
IIoT is a combination of a wireless sensor network, communication phism hash function, consortium BC with PoA consensus mechanism.
protocol, and internet infrastructure for monitoring, analysis, and man- The proposed architecture includes three entities; the service provider,
agement [87]. IIoT can also be defined as the automation of the the IIoT client, and the arbitration node. Also analyzed was the security
conventional manufacturing industry. IIoT is an integration of many and efficiency of the proposed scheme.
technologies like the Internet, IIoT, blockchain, big data, edge, and Product Life cycle Management: Liu et al. [214] proposed a BC-
cloud computing, robotics, human–machine interaction, artificial intel- enabled data collection and secure sharing scheme. Uses the private
ligence, and open-source software [87,207]. IIoT architecture involves BC Ethereum platform to ensure the security and reliability of data
three layers, the physical layer, the communication layer, and the appli- shared and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to achieve the maximum
cation layer. The physical layer consists of physical devices like sensors, amount of collected data. The proposed scheme is simulated using
the communication layer uses network technologies like a wireless the python language and Ethereum platform with the PBFT consensus
sensor network, and the application layer contains different applica- algorithm. Authors have analyzed the proposed scheme and the results
tions using IIoT [87]. Industry 4.0 will bring the revolution by making show that it provides better security against attacks such as eclipse
machines smarter, factories more efficient, processes less wasteful, and attacks, majority attacks, and terminal device failure. In line with that,
higher productivity [208]. IIoT is facing several challenges which need Liu et al. [215] proposed a BC-enabled framework for data exchange
to be addressed. Some of the general challenges being faced by IIoT and service sharing among the products, factories, business networks,
are interoperability issues, security vulnerability, lack of data analy- and customers in the product life cycle. First, it proposed the idea of
sis, improved resilience, fast adaptability, improved trust, and lower integrating BC with IoT, M2M, and consensus algorithm, and secondly

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Table 11
Summary of related work in BC-smart grid.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Guan et al. [189] Proposed an approach to preserve user‘s Uses blockchain, bloom filter, RSA ✓ ✓ – – ✓
identity and efficient data aggregation in algorithm, and zero-knowledge proof.
a smart grid.
Mengelkamp et al. [198] Proposed an approach for trading local Uses distributed information and ✓ – – – –
energy generation. communication technology i.e. private
permissioned blockchain, Ethereum
blockchain, PoW consensus algorithm,
and on-chain simulation.
Gao et al. [196] Proposed an approach to monitor Uses smart contracts, blockchain, and ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ –
electricity consumption, that allows no SHA-256 and analyzes the performance
manipulation and protects consumer in terms of information sharing, efficient
data recorded and transferred. data manageability, and data
immutability.
Gai et al. [188] Proposed a privacy-preserving Uses Hyperledger fabric consortium – – – – ✓
blockchain-enabled trading model. blockchain for secure energy trading
system, smart contract for preventing
privacy leakage.
Baza et al. [204] Proposed a blockchain-based approach Uses Ethereum BC platform, smart – ✓ – ✓ ✓
to enable a decentralized charging contracts written in solidity language to
coordination mechanism. implement charging coordination
algorithm.
Sestrem et al. [205] Proposed an approach for the Uses three blockchains named BlockPRI, ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
implementation of blockchain in a smart BlockSEC, and BlockTST, smart
grid. contracts, Loom network, side chains,
and DPOS consensus algorithm.
Bera et al. [203] Proposed a BC-based access control Uses Dolev-Yao (DY) threat model, ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
protocol named DBACP-IoTSG, for private BC, SHA-256/512, PBFT
IoT-enabled smart grids. consensus algorithm, random numbers,
and current timestamp and analyzed the
approach in terms of computation and
communication cost.
Naseer et al. [199] Proposed a BC-enabled scheme for Uses Ethereum BC platform, SHA-256, ✓ ✓ ✓ – –
access control to ensure tamper-proof, elliptic curve cryptography, and BC and
trusted communication between entities analyzed the scheme in terms of security
of smart grid. and performance.
Wang et al. [200] Proposed a mechanism by integrating BC Uses public and private BC both and ✓ ✓ – – ✓
and 5G MEC technologies for the deployed on MEC server. Also analyzed
connection of massive power IoT was the performance of different
devices. consensus algorithms in terms of
average computing time and average
time to an agreement.
Guan et al. [194] Proposed an approach named Uses credibility-based equity proof – ✓ – – ✓
privacy-preserving blockchain energy consensus algorithm, elliptic curve
trading scheme (PP-BCETS) based on digital signature algorithm, SHA-256,
ciphertext policy attribute, which and Ethereum BC platform. Finally, a
exponentially improves operation security analysis and performance
efficiency. evaluation are presented.
Wang et al. [206] Proposed an approach for mutual Uses Ethereum BC, smart contracts, ✓ – – – –
authentication in smart grids. elliptic curve cryptography, join and exit
mechanism, and batch verification.
Mazumdar et al. [201] Proposed an approach to detect energy Uses consortium BC hyperledger best – – – – ✓
theft with privacy preservation of energy with Proof of Authority consensus,
consumption data for smart grid AES256 for encrypting private
neighborhood area network. transactions. User and data
authentication is achieved using
ZK-STARK and RS256 digital signature.
SHA256 is used to hash energy
consumption data.
Wang et al. [202] Proposed a solution to mitigate latency Uses Fog Nodes with ElGamal ✓ ✓ ✓ – –
and bandwidth-related challenges cryptosystem, computational Diffie
hellman algorithm.

developed a BC information service to maintain the connection between (used to collect data using IoT devices like QR codes, RFID tags, and
a single node with the BC network. Smart contracts written using GO GPS sensors), the off-chain layer (collected data will be processed in
language are used to automate the alert service in the product life BC information service), the BC layer (which contains smart contracts,
cycle and SHA-256 for encryption with Hyperledger fabric Java SDK consensus protocol, DApps, and cryptography), application layer (in-
with redundant Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus algorithm. The cludes services and software) and service layer (services like product
proposed framework includes mainly five layers; the perception layer creation, tracking and tracing, product maintenance, and recycling).

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Finally, the analysis was presented in terms of latency and throughput and trusted data sharing, accessing, tracking, tracing, and monitor-
and the results show that the proposed framework is scalable, efficient, ing. The proposed framework includes mainly three parts; IoT-Edge
and feasible for industries. networks, Fog networks, and cloud networks Along with this authors
Secure and Trustworthy Operations: Huang et al. [216] presented have analyzed the performance using the simulator iFogSim in terms
a BC-based system with a credit-based consensus mechanism for IoT of latency, power consumption, and network usage.
devices to decrease the power usage in the consensus mechanism, and Table 12 summarizes the work done in the BC-IIoT use case.
to ensure system security and efficiency. A data authority management
method was designed to protect sensitive data and regulate access to
sensor data. In particular, uses directed acyclic graph (DAG) structured 3.7.3. Summary
BC, implemented the system using Raspberry Pi, symmetric key encryp- IIoT is an application of IoT in different industry domains which
tion, SHA-256 to distribute secret keys, AES block cipher algorithm, helps in achieving automation and an efficient industry approach. It
and a case study of the smart factory was presented. The proposed offers the ability to interconnect numerous devices, process various
system is resilient against various attacks such as DDoS, Sybil attacks, data, and reduce human intervention, Still, IIoT is facing various issues,
and double-spending attacks. In 2019, Rathee et al. [217] proposed a like privacy-related concerns while collecting and sharing data, high
secure hybrid IIoT framework using BC technology for tracing workers’ costs, high rate of failures, massive data management, and untrusted
location, product shipment, and product documentation and maintain- third parties. Here, BC can be used to mitigate these challenges because
ing transparency among users located at different locations. Recording of the features offered by BC such as ease of record-keeping, avoiding
of information is done using BC technology. Finally, the performance fraudulent cases, improved transparency, and a decentralized approach.
is analyzed using the NS2 simulator and the results show the proposed Researchers are exploring different areas for the adoption of BC-IIoT
approach offers 89% success over user request time, falsification attack, on a large scale. Numerous research works have been done in various
black hole attack, and probabilistic authentication scenario. In 2021, application areas like data collection and sharing, product life cycle
Rathee et al. [218] proposed a BC-enabled secured wireless mechanism management, network computing services, secure and trustworthy op-
to preserve transparency and secure each activity of smart sensors. The erations, identity management, and BC-IIoT. For secure and trustworthy
proposed approach uses distributed cloud framework using BC, and operations authors have used DAG, Raspberry Pi, SHA-256, RFID, PoAh
RFID. Mainly it includes registration of sensors on BC and consensus consensus algorithm, and elliptic curve digital signature algorithm.
among users and industry providers for the product shipment. Finally, Whereas for identity management off-chain storage is preferred to
the approach is simulated using the NS2 simulator in terms of probabil- ensure GDPR compliance. Ethereum BC platform with PBFT consensus
ity of attack success, ease of attack detection, falsification attack, and algorithm, smart contracts are written using GO language, SHA-256
authentication delay. with hyperledger with PBFT is used for product life cycle management.
In the line above work, in 2021, Latif et al. [219] proposed a private While the PoA consensus algorithm with smart contracts was preferred
and lightweight BC-based architecture for secured and trustworthy
for network computing services. Still, some areas need to be focused
industrial operations and implemented it for a food processing plant
on in the future such as the time required to validate a block can
use case. It uses a low-power ARM Cortex M4 processor, energy-
be improved, real network computing enabled IIoT platform to add
efficient consensus mechanism proof of authority (PoAh). The proposed
more features, a non-repudiation dispute resolution mechanism for a
architecture is used to perform industrial operations such as user and
massive amount of data generated, integration of various technologies
device registration, sensor and actuator data storage, and client service
such as edge computing, 3D printing, SDN, NFV to address different
task. It has three layers; the physical layer (sensors, actuators, and
requirements like adaptive security, privacy, and trust mechanism.
microcomputers), the BC service layer (ARM Cortex-based lightweight
Integrating BC-IIoT offers various opportunities but along with that,
nodes, private BC), and the application layer (which provides services
like administration, user management, and task management). It uses some challenges are being faced such as scalability, high infrastructural
sensors, actuators, private BC, ARM Cortex lightweight nodes, ellip- costs, throughput, and a large number of simultaneous users.
tic curve digital signature algorithm to generate public and private
keys, and proof of authentication consensus algorithm. Moreover, the 3.8. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
performance analysis in terms of execution time, power consumption,
and memory utilization has shown the effectiveness of the proposed UAVs, also known as drones, are self-programmed devices that do
architecture.
not require any human pilot but are managed through mobile applica-
Identity Management: Sarier et al. [220] proposed a BC-based
tions [222]. These are equipped with sensors and processors. It was first
identity management system. Combining it with off-chain storage en-
introduced in 1920 for military operations and later on also deployed
sures GDPR compliance, required to protect user data. Moreover, it
for civil applications such as traffic management, photography, and
includes a blinded DLRep scheme to provide multi-show unlinkability.
shooting, product delivery [223] and it is simply an aerial device with-
For bigger organizations, it replaces the Merkle tree with an accumu-
out pilot [224]. UAVs are designed in different sizes, large size UAVs
lator to improve scalability. Major participating entities are creden-
are more suitable for defense applications while small-size UAVs are
tial generators, credential issuers and verifiers, and service enablers.
User privacy is achieved by implementing an efficient authentication best for civilian applications [224]. Based on altitude, UAVs are cate-
scheme. gorized as high altitude (used in wide geographical areas with extended
BC-IIoT: Teslya et al. [221] presented the possible ways to integrate battery) and low altitude UAVs (used in normal day-to-day tasks with
BC technology with IoT. The architecture was developed by combining fast deployment, cost-effective and limited battery) [223]. According to
the smart M3 platform and BC along with smart contracts to process the report of SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute),
and store information related to the interaction between smart com- India is one of the top countries for importing drones which is 22.5%
ponents. A core component is a semantic information broker (SIB) to of the world‘s UAVs [224]. According to the report by the Federation
store information and service requests of participants. In particular, of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the adoption
uses a tiger tree hashing algorithm to calculate transaction hashes. In rate of UAVs in India and globally is expected to be 885.7 million USD
2020, Kumar et al. [209] proposed a framework named as BlockEdge and 21.47 billion USD respectively [223]. Some of the applications of
by integrating edge computing and BC, to resolve the challenges such as UAVs are product delivery, Military surveillance, aerial photography,
data integrity, trust, and security. Edge computing helps in achieving traffic control, and management and cinematography [225]. Some of
low latency and lightweight private permissioned BC ensuring secure the general challenges faced by UAVs are security and privacy, and

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Table 12
Summary of related work in BC-IIoT.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Tesla et al. [221] An architecture was developed by Uses tiger tree hashing algorithm to – – – – –
combining the smart M3 platform and calculate transaction hashes.
BC to process and store information
related to the interaction between smart
components.
Liu et al. [214] Proposed a BC-enabled data collection Uses Ethereum as private BC, DRL, and ✓ – – – –
and secure sharing scheme by PBFT consensus algorithm. Analyzed the
integrating BC with deep reinforcement proposed scheme against attacks such as
learning (DRL) for IIoT. eclipse attacks, majority attacks, and
terminal device failure.
Huang et al. [216] Proposed a credit-based system that Uses public blockchain network, directed – ✓ ✓ – ✓
ensures system security and protects the acyclic graph (DAG) structured BC,
confidentiality of data. Also, a data implemented the system using Raspberry
authority management method was Pi, symmetric key encryption, SHA-256,
designed to protect sensitive data. AES block cipher algorithm.
Xu et al. [213] Proposed a BC-based fair Uses smart contracts, homomorphic and – – – – –
non-repudiation service provisioning homomorphism hash function,
scheme for IIoT applications. Also consortium BC with PoA consensus
designed a service verification method mechanism, and analysis of the security
based on homomorphic hash techniques and efficiency of the proposed scheme.
to validate services based on lightweight
on-chain evidence.
Rathee et al. [217] Proposed a secure hybrid industrial IoT Uses blockchain technology, with PoW ✓ – – – ✓
framework for tracing workers’ location, consensus algorithm and performance is
product shipment, and product analyzed using NS2 simulator over
documentation. request time, falsification attack, black
hole attack, and probabilistic
authentication scenario.
Kumar et al. [209] Proposed a framework named as Uses edge computing and lightweight ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
BlockEdge, to address some of the issues private blockchain technology and
faced by current IIoT like latency, power analyzed the performance in terms of
consumption, and network usage. latency, power consumption, and
network usage.
Liu et al. [215] Proposed a BC-enabled PLM (product Uses smart contracts, SHA-256, – – – – ✓
life cycle management)framework for Hyperledger fabric Java SDK with
data exchange and service sharing redundant Byzantine Fault Tolerance
among the products, factories, business consensus algorithm.
network, and customers.
Rathee et al. [218] Proposed an approach using BC for Uses distributed cloud framework using ✓ – – – ✓
secured wireless to maintain BC, RFID. The analysis is performed in
transparency and secure activities of terms of the success rate of the attack,
smart sensors. ease of attack detection, falsification
attack, and authentication delay.
Manogaran et al. [212] Introduced a BC-based secured data Uses BC technology with IoT. Analysis ✓ ✓ – – ✓
sharing model named BSDS for inbound performed in terms of response rate and
and outbound security in data failure rate.
acquisition and dissemination.
Sarier et al. [220] Proposed a BC-based identity Uses accumulators, BC with off-chain ✓ – – – –
management system. Combining it with storage.
off-chain storage ensures GDPR
compliance, required to protect user
data.
Latif et al. [219] Proposed a private BC-enabled Uses sensors, actuators, private BC, ARM ✓ ✓ – – ✓
architecture for secured and trustworthy Cortex lightweight nodes, elliptic curve
industrial operations. digital signature algorithm, proof of
authentication consensus algorithm and
analyzed the performance in terms of
execution time, power consumption, and
memory utilization.

latency. Some of the application areas of UAVs are defense, agriculture, 3.8.1. Applications of blockchain in UAV
transportation, delivering goods, and surveying. Integrating BC with • Data Storage and Verification using UAV - The data collected
UAV has great potential. For example, military information is highly with the help of UAVs can be directly transmitted to a cyber–
sensitive and confidential thus it must be safe and secured and BC can physical system connected through BC. Each block will contain
be a good choice for this [224]. Some of the practical implementations details that are scanned through the UAVs and the time of the
of UAVs are companies like Matternet and Flirtey, which uses UAVs for creation of the block. With the integration of BC with UAV,
the delivery of medicines in rural areas [224]. information can be stored and monitored efficiently [226].

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

• BC-based UAV Surveillance - Video surveillance is very impor- resistance against intrusion and reply attacks. A simulation was per-
tant whether it is at the border, at traffic lights, DAM‘s or in formed using MATLAB and python. In 2020, Xu et al. [230] proposed
our homes. All these tasks can be performed by using UAVs. But a BC-based UAV-assisted IoT, a data collection secured and energy
because of the dynamic nature of the UAVs, they also face some efficient scheme. An adaptive linear prediction algorithm was designed
challenges like trust and data authentication, finding the optimal to reduce energy consumption and based on this algorithm, a data
path, security, reliability, unauthorized access to the UAVs ID, transmission scheme for BC-based UAV-assisted IoT is also proposed.
and DoS attack. BC can mitigate these challenges, BC ensures the BC-enabled UAVs consist of three main entities; IoT devices, the UAV
security of information by sharing and verifying the data in a swarm, and the charging station and management swarm. Uses BC in
distributed manner. the UAV swarm (to record forwarding), private chain, edge computing,
• Blockchain-based UAV system for automation of supply chain and asymmetric encryption for acquiring data security. The proposed
- Supply chain and logistics require manpower from the produc- approach has three special attributes which make it suitable for UAV-
tion of any product to its distribution and sales. Automating all assisted IoT namely; every forwarding is defined as a transaction and
of these tasks leads to reduced manpower, on-time deliveries, each transaction is initiated by the management server, difficulty of
and increased profits. UAVs can help in surveying the stocks, mining, and charging strategy. Moreover, performance was evaluated
collecting data, and dispatching products. But at the same time using MATLAB in terms of security, accuracy, energy efficiency, train-
automating these tasks will also lead to security threats. BC ing overhead, and training delay. Simulation results show proposed
technology can be used to maintain trust and security and store scheme offers better security and is energy-efficient.
data. The supply chain requires the collection of data which is Health Monitoring: In 2019, Islam et al. [231] proposed a BC-
generally performed by humans and is prone to errors. This is based scheme for secure monitoring using UAVs outside the homes
where UAVs can be used to collect the data. in smart cities. The main components involved are the user (citizens),
UAV (provides extended connectivity and low power transmission), and
MEC (works as a validator in BC). It accumulates health data using
3.8.2. Related work
wearable sensors and transmits it to the nearest MEC server using UAV.
The research works related to UAVs have been discussed under
It uses the private Ethereum BC platform. Furthermore, performance
different categories which are discussed as follows:
was evaluated in terms of processing time, expected transmission of
Communication: Kumari et al. [223] presented a survey on BC-
data, validation time, and energy consumption using MATLAB and
based softwarization for UAV networks. It provides a brief introduction
Python. In line with that, in 2020, Islam et al. [232] proposed a
about BC and UAV and highlights the challenges faced by the conven-
BC-based secure healthcare scheme called BHEALTH in which health
tional UAVs approach such as security is a major concern. To resolve
data is collected using UAVs. It uses consortium BC Ethereum BC
the challenges, the authors have proposed a BC-based UAV softwariza-
platform with proof of authority (PoA) consensus algorithm, and time
tion architecture for secure UAV networks to provide dynamic, flexible,
division multiple access (TDMA) protocols for communication. Core
and on-the-fly decision capabilities. The proposed approach includes
entities involved in the proposed scheme are the body sensor hive
four layers; the infrastructure layer, the BC middleware layer, the
(BSH) and server. BHEALTH does not have any reward for validators.
control layer, and the application layer. It uses public BC Ethereum
Moreover, the author presented a security and performance analysis
client to store UAV communications and SDN controller information as
in terms of throughput, energy consumption, and processing time.
a transaction with IPFS to store data. Moreover, they discussed the chal-
BHEALTH is resilient against numerous threats such as man in the
lenges in integrating BC-UAV such as interoperability, data processing
middle, unauthorized access, illegal data tampering, and reply attack.
latency, data security, real-time deployment, and BC standardization.
In 2021, Raj et al. [233] proposed an approach based on BC,
Privacy & Security: Rana et al. [227] and Abualsauod et al. [228] for health monitoring using UAVs. In particular, healthcare data is
both worked to choose the same direction, i.e., security and privacy in collected using sensors and delivered using UAV to servers, and then
UAV. In 2019, Rana et al. [227] proposed an approach to improve the saved using BC. The authors have highlighted the threats that are
security of UAVs using BC. Integrating BC with UAV helps in achiev- faced by UAVs during transmissions such as reply attacks, unauthorized
ing additional security in transmitting signals as BC uses private key access, and man-in-the-middle-attack. Furthermore, they have used the
cryptography and peer-to-peer network. In particular, it uses BC, image threat model to analyze security aspects, performance is analyzed in
gathering and sensing of UAV, SHA-256, timestamp (to keep a log of a terms of energy consumption, individual processing time, and data
transaction between the server and drone with its GPS location), and transmission. Authors Aggarwal et al. [234] proposed an effective and
GPS location (will be added by UAV in the block). In line with that, in efficient, three-layered architecture for the collection, processing, and
2022, Abualsauod et al. [228] proposed a solution to resolve security transmission of medical data using UAVs, ensuring security and privacy
and privacy-related issues in UAV-assisted IoT applications using BC. during the transfer of medical data. Three layers are patient-generated
In particular, the authors choose to use Ethereum BC, SHA, and elliptic data and clinical data, BC network of UAV, and data analytics and
curve cryptography with numerous machine learning algorithms like K visualization. In particular, authors have used Ethereum BC with the
Nearest Neighbour and Naive Bayes. Furthermore, the authors analyzed PoW consensus algorithm. For analysis, they have focused on three
the proposed solution in terms of system utility, latency, and processing major attacks; confidentiality attack, integrity attack, and availability
time with overall attack detection accuracy. Results show that with the attack.
implementation of BC, latency and processing time are increased which Spectrum Trading: Qiu et al. [235] proposed a BC-based privacy-
increases the overall time consumption and reduction in attack rates. preserving scheme for trading and sharing of the spectrum to resolve
Data Collection: Islam et al. [229] and Xu et al. [230] worked in issues related to privacy and security. It uses consortium BC technology,
the same direction i.e., data collection using BC through UAVs. Islam edge computing, and a proof of work consensus algorithm. Major enti-
et al. [229] proposed a BC-enabled secure scheme for data acquisition ties involved are trusted authorities, spectrum providers and requestors,
through UAVs and IoT devices. It includes two-way validation using edge computing nodes, and smart counters. Also for efficient pricing of
the pie hash bloom filter and digital signature algorithm. Using the spectrum, a non-uniform pricing algorithm and a distributed uniform
consortium BC Ethereum platform, Geth was used as an Ethereum pricing bargaining algorithm are designed. Analysis shows that the
client and proof of authority (PoA) consensus algorithm. Furthermore, proposed scheme offers better security and privacy.
it presented a performance analysis in terms of connectivity, energy UAV Visualization: Pathak et al. [236] proposed BC-enabled UAV
consumption, and security analysis against various threats such as man virtualization for IIoT called AerialBlocks to provide secure and per-
in the middle, key spoof resistance, data tampering resistance, and sistent UAV services to the end-users with the help of BC to ensure

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

security, privacy, service quality, and transparency. It includes three 4.1. Scalability
actors; the UAV owner (takes care of the maintenance of the UAV),
end-users (registers to the platform to access UAV service), and the
Scalability is defined as the ability of a system to handle the increase
virtual UAV service provider (the link between the UAV owner and end-
or decrease in terms of size, volume, performance, and cost [239].
users). The proposed architecture includes three layers; the application
When the number of active users increases in blockchain, a scalability
layer (web-based applications for end-users), the virtualization layer
issue arises that affects blockchain performance [240]. For instance,
(the connecting layer between the physical and application layer), and
in the bitcoin blockchain, the number of transactions that arrives
the physical layer (Physical UAVs available on the ground for various
can vary, maybe 10 or maybe 100 but irrespective of the number of
UAV missions). It uses permissioned BC (to ensure that only registered
arriving transactions, the blockchain process only some fixed number
end users and UAV owners can access), smart contracts (used to store
of transactions relying upon the size of the block (such as the size
transactions and business regulation), and a combination of proof
of bitcoin block is 1 MB and can process only seven transactions per
of authentication and practical byzantine fault tolerance consensus
algorithm to ensure lightweight validation for fault tolerance. seconds) [29]. The number of transactions processed per second in
blockchain relies upon a wide range of factors like network latency,
Authentication: Tan et al. [237] proposed a BC-enabled authenti-
consensus protocol, and CPU processing power. This restricted block
cation approach for industrial UAVs. In particular, they use hyperledger
fabric and smart contracts with the Kafka consensus algorithm. During size cannot process a large number of transactions at once which causes
designing the particular approach, the authors considered some goals; delays in transactions [63]. The system must be scalable so that it must
confidentiality, mutual authentication, conditional anonymity, perfect be able to handle the sudden increase and decrease in the transaction
forward secrecy, backward secrecy, resistance to cyber-attack, and load. Because of the decentralized structure of blockchain, each node
lightweight. Moreover, a security analysis was performed based on must process each transaction which leads to low capacity and low
two problems i.e., elliptic curve discrete logarithmic and computa- speed of transaction processing [241]. The Sharding process partition
tional Diffie Hellman problem, to ensure the security provided by the the network into numerous small subsets known as shards to avoid the
proposed approach. duplication of resources such as communication, data storage, and com-
Table 13 summarizes the work done in a BC-UAV use case. putation overhead and improves the blockchain‘s performance [242].
Each shard includes a different set of transactions instead of the whole
network processing the same transaction. This helps in improving the
3.8.3. Summary throughput of the network [243]. As IoT is a collection of connected
UAVs are flying drones equipped with sensors, deployed for traffic devices and IoT is becoming the Internet of Everything (IoE), that
applications, photography, and surveillance. To achieve such services means a lot of connected devices are involved or each and everything
IoT is an important requirement. Security and privacy issues because of is connected, which means a lot of transactions occur and enormous
an untrusted broadcast, and a single point of failure due to a centralized data will be generated [3,24]. Therefore, it is important to maintain
system are some of the challenges being faced by the existing ap-
the scalability in BC-IoT. Table 15 encapsulates the technical aspect of
proach. Combining BC with UAV brings numerous opportunities such as
the scalability of BC.
more secure, autonomous, flexible, improved service quality, and user
experience. Various research works have been carried out to explore
the applications of BC with UAVs. In particular, the authors explored 4.1.1. Challenges related to the scalability:
the applications of BC using UAVs for communication, data collection, In this segment, we are reviewing and discussing the scalability
health monitoring, spectrum trading, UAV visualization, and improved challenges faced by blockchain for IoT.
privacy and security. Authors preferred consortium BC, Ethereum BC,
IPFS, and SHA-256 with PoA consensus algorithm. For spectrum trading • Throughput: In general, throughput is defined as the rate at
authors used BC with edge technology, PoW consensus algorithm, and which something is processed. In the context of blockchain for
smart contracts as authors preferred Proof of authentication with the IoT, throughput implies the number of transactions processed per
PBFT consensus algorithm. Some of the future aspects that need to be second. If we take bitcoin as an example then in bitcoin only
considered for widespread adoption of BC-enabled UAVs are integrating seven transactions per second can be processed while existing
AI and ML-based algorithms, and satellite-based networks for UAV
payment systems like VISA can process 4000 transactions per
visualization, implementing UAVs for different use cases like UAV-
second [29,240]. Here, processing seven transactions per second
driven healthcare use cases, consumer-friendly drones where mobile
means, irrespective of the input transactions coming at any rate,
phones can act as servers. Along with the benefits offered by inte-
that the system is not scaling up with the inputs and giving a
grating BC-UAV, there are some challenges such as interoperability,
flat response, which naturally relies upon the underlying avail-
data processing latency, data security, real-time deployment, and BC
able hardware, the number of peers connected, and its available
standardization.
computational power [63].
• Storage: Whenever a new transaction comes, all the new trans-
4. Technical aspects and challenges actions get accumulated in the pool of unconfirmed transactions,
and miners pick a transaction to validate and verify the trans-
The integration of BC-IoT has been broadly used in different fields action. As the size of the block is limited, so the number of
because of its key attributes like decentralization, data immutability, transactions that can be stored in the block is also restricted.
and trustworthiness. This segment presents the most difficult issues Miners pick the transactions with a higher processing rate and
identified with the execution of BC for IoT, specifically, Security, Pri- transactions with less processing rate get delayed [29]. For ex-
vacy, Scalability, Access Control, Processing Power, Data Storage (On ample, in the food supply chain, a large number of IoT-enabled
Chain versus Off-Chain), and Consensus algorithms. Besides, the effect devices are used which leads to a huge amount of transaction
of these issues and the work done on these aspects are talked about in data (may be audio, video, images) to be stored on the blockchain
this part. Table 14 summarizes the blockchain related challenges for which leads to large storage and higher costs and directly affects
different applications and use cases. the scalability [152].

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Table 13
Summary of related work in BC-UAV.
Reference Main contribution Relevance to BC Targeted characteristics
Authenticity Integrity Confidentiality Provenance Privacy
Islam et al. [231] Proposed a BC-based scheme for outdoor Uses Ethereum BC, UAV, MEC, and – – – – –
health monitoring called BHMUS using python language. Also, evaluation of
UAVs. performance is done in terms of
processing time, expected transmission
of data, validation time, and energy
consumption.
Qiu et al. [235] Proposed a scheme for preserving Uses consortium BC technology, edge – ✓ ✓ – ✓
privacy, secure trading, and sharing of computing as a network enabler to
the spectrum along with a Stackelberg offload the computation-intensive proof
game to obtain maximum spectrum of work puzzle. Also, an analysis of
pricing. A non-uniform pricing algorithm performance is done in terms of
with low complexity and a distributed transaction security and privacy.
uniform pricing bargaining algorithm is
also designed.
Islam et al. [229] Proposed a BC-enabled secure scheme Uses consortium BC Ethereum platform, ✓ ✓ – – ✓
for data acquisition through UAVs and Geth was used as Ethereum client and
IoT devices. proof of authority (PoA) consensus
algorithm and performance is analyzed
in terms of connectivity and energy
consumption.
Rana et al. [227] Proposed an approach for maintaining Uses cloud for data storage with ✓ – – – ✓
the privacy, and security of UAVs by blockchain, SHA256, image gathering,
using BC. and sensing of the UAV. time stamp and
GPS location.
Kumari et al. [223] Proposed a BC-based UAV softwarization Uses public BC Ethereum client to store ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
architecture for secure UAV networks. UAV communications and SDN
controller information as a transaction
with IPFS to store data.
Islam et al. [232] Proposed a UAV-assisted healthcare Uses consortium BC Ethereum BC ✓ ✓ – – –
scheme that collects health data from platform with proof of authority (PoA)
users through UAV. consensus algorithm, time division
multiple access (TDMA) protocols for
communication. Also analyzed were the
security and performance.
Xu et al. [230] Proposed a BC-based data collection Uses BC private chain, edge computing, – – – – ✓
scheme. An adaptive linear prediction asymmetric encryption, and MATLAB to
algorithm was also designed to reduce analyze the performance in terms of
energy consumption. security, accuracy, energy efficiency,
training overhead, and training delay.
Pathak et al. [236] Proposed BC-driven UAV virtualization Uses permissioned BC, smart contracts, – – ✓ – ✓
for IIoT called AerialBlocks to provide and a combination of proof of
secure and persistent UAV services to authentication and practical byzantine
the end-users with the help of BC to fault tolerance consensus algorithm.
ensure security, privacy, service quality,
and transparency.
Raj et al. [233] Proposed an approach for health Uses Ethereum BC, smart contracts, – ✓ – – –
monitoring using UAV. A threat model mobile edge computing, and smart
is used to analyze security aspects. sensor devices.
Results are analyzed in terms of latency,
block size, and throughput.
Aggarwal et al. [234] Proposed a three-layered architecture for Uses Ethereum BC with PoW consensus ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
the collection, processing, and algorithm to verify medical data.
transmission of medical data using
UAVs.
Abualsauod et al. [228] Proposed a solution to resolve security Uses Ethereum BC, cloud platform, ✓ ✓ – – ✓
and privacy challenges in UAV-assisted elliptic curve cryptography, SHA
IoT applications. Analyzed the proposed algorithm (to protect data privacy),
solution in terms of system utility, multiple ML algorithms, K Nearest
latency, and processing time with Neighbours, and Naive Bayes.
overall attack detection accuracy.
Tan et al. [237] Proposed a BC-enabled authentication Uses hyperledger fabric and smart ✓ ✓ ✓ – ✓
approach for industrial UAVs. contracts with the Kafka consensus
algorithm.

4.2. Security and privacy transaction information and data in a block, detection of threat, and
prevention of threat [244]. As blockchain is distributed and decentral-
In general, Security is defined as the protection of the system against ized in nature it allows nodes to join the network and can view all
malicious attacks, unauthorized access, modifications, and deletion. the details of the transactions occurring in the network. It is crucial
In the context of the blockchain, security means the protection of to maintain the integrity of the transactions, and availability of data,

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Table 14
Role of blockchain in IoT applications for various use cases.
Application Use cases Advantages of using blockchain Blockchain related deployment challenges

Non-Repudiation
Decentralization

Confidentiality
Immutability

Auditability

Automation
Availability
Provenance

Lower Cost
Anonymity
Electronic Health Record L H M M H H L H L H Scalability, Chances of centralization
Compliance to privacy laws, Throughput,
Healthcare Drug Supply Chain H H M M H L H L L L
Scalability, and Immense data management
Throughput, Data storage, Number of con-
Health Insurance Claim H H M L H L L H L H
current users
Smart Home Automated Home Appliances L M H L H H H H M M Scalability, Interoperability
Massive data storage, Scalability, Chances of
Digital Identity M H H L H H H M L H
centralization
Smart Cities Legal issues, Updating smart contracts,
Smart Governance H M H M H H H M L H Defining protocols for being decentralized
systems, Enormous data storage
Operational cost of transaction, Throughput,
Data storage, Large number of simultaneous
Online Education H M H L H H M M M M
users, and Revoke a certification before its
expiration
Smart Transportation H H H M M H H H M L Interoperability
Data management, Interoperability, and
Food Supply Chain H H H L H M H L L L
Scalability
Supply Chains
Legal issues, Interoperability, Binding the
& Logistics Pharmaceutical Supply Chain H H M M H L H L L L
physical and digital
Legal issues, Interoperability, Binding the
Automotive Supply Chain H H M M H H H H L L
physical and digital
Autonomous Electric Vehicle Charging H H H M H H H H L L High infrastructural costs
Vehicle Smart Insurance M H H M H H H M L M Massive data storage
Self Driving Vehicle M H H L H H H H L L Scalability, Chances of centralization
Digital Service Record H H H M H H H L L H Scalability
Scalability, Chances of centralization, High
Peer-to-Peer Trading H H H L H H H H L L
infrastructural costs
Energy Trading in Electric
Smart Grid H H H M H H H H L L High infrastructural costs
Vehicle
Power Generation and Power
H H H L H H H M L L High infrastructural costs
Distribution
Secure Equipment
H H H L H H H M L M Scalability
Maintenance
Healthcare Industry H H H M H H M L L M Scalability, Chances of centralization
IIoT Power Industry H M H L H H H H L H High infrastructural costs
Throughput, Data storage, Large number of
Manufacturing Industry H M H L H H H H L L
simultaneous users
Physical and security attacks, Breach of pri-
UAVs Surveillance L H H L H M H H L H vacy, Legal issues, Light-weight consensus
algorithms for resource-constrained robots

H High Relevance M Medium Relevance L Low Relevance

and to prevent double-spending, the system must be secured [245]. all these transactions can be linked then the identity of the person who
According to a report titled ‘‘State of IoT security’’, cyber-attacks on is behind the transactions gets revealed. So it is important to achieve
IoT have increased by 22% [246]. As BC-IoT implies a huge num- privacy in blockchain [245].
ber of connected devices in a distributed and decentralized manner, IoT-driven devices collect a lot of data and personal information
without security, these connected devices can be hacked, and once from the surrounding environment and they communicate with each
the hacker gains control, they can tamper with the data. So all the other. When such data is managed by some central authority then the
connected devices must be secured [24]. Privacy means protecting user’s privacy is at risk. Here blockchain technology can help maintain
stored, transmitted, and processed private information such as data, IoT privacy [248]. As BC supports distributed and decentralized fea-
identity, and location [247]. Especially in permissionless blockchain tures but with this also some challenges arise. Table 16 encapsulates
anyone can join the network and sometimes the nodes present in the
the technical aspects of the security of BC.
network are the malicious ones whose aim is to collect the information
from the network [247]. In the context of the blockchain, maintaining
privacy means performing a transaction without leaking the user’s 4.2.1. Challenges related to the security & privacy:
identification information [244]. The privacy and security of data can This section highlights the challenges related to the privacy and
essentially be achieved by fulfilling five basic criteria such as con- security of the BC for IoT.
fidentiality, availability, integrity, authentication, access control, and
privacy requirements [247]. As blockchain is distributed and decen- • Transaction Privacy Leakage: Blockchain uses asymmetric key
tralized in nature, transaction privacy is not guaranteed. The issue with cryptography as it uses public key and private key pairs for
blockchain is that users cannot stay anonymous [84]. Especially, this is transactions. The real identity of the user does not get revealed
a challenge in public blockchain as anyone can join the network and as a blockchain-generated address was provided to the user and
all the previous and current transactions are visible [29]. If somehow all the transactions occur between these addresses to hide the

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Table 15
Summary of technical aspect — scalability.
Reference Technical aspect Proposed solution
Atlam et al. [3] All the transactions are stored in a ledger that is shared No solution is proposed.
among all the nodes and the size of the blockchain increases
continuously, which has a direct effect on the speed.
Gao et al. [238] & Zheng et al. [29] Discussed the continuous increase in the size of the BC Both have discussed two solutions to resolve this issue:
which results in increased cost of storage, BC becomes bulky storage optimization of data and redesigning blockchain.
and also leads to a reduction in distribution speed in the
network.
Reyna et al. [24] Talked about the size of the BC, as the size grows nodes Suggested off-chain storage and inter-planetary file system.
required more resources, which also has an effect on
performance, synchronization time increases.
Mahmoud et al. [40] & Xie et al. [84] Discussed the ever-growing and continuously increasing size Highlighted the solutions like BC pruning and Lightning
of the BC. network and storing data off-chain using DHT (Distributed
Hash Table) respectively.
Monrat et al. [63] As BC is distributed in nature, copies of the ledger are stored Suggested using DCS (Decentralized, Consistent, and
at each node which has a direct effect on throughput and Scalable) theorem.
latency. In the PoW algorithm resources are wasted in
solving the puzzle which also results in low throughput and
high latency. Also, the PoW algorithm is CPU intensive
leading to high electricity consumption.
Rupasena et al. [152] Discussed FSC, transaction data generated is extremely large, Also discussed that data about the product in FSC is not
leading to the blockchain ledger growing continuously. required after a certain period but as BC is an immutable
ledger. In contrast to this fact, suggested an off-chain storage
scheme and a technique to reduce the growth of off-chain
storage.

original identity of the user. But still, the privacy of the trans- 4.3. IoT data storage
actions is not guaranteed since all the transactions that occur in
the network are visible to all the nodes present in the network Data storage refers to storing or recording data or information using
and still, some detectable hints can divulge the identity of the some storage medium so that when required it allows easy retrieval of
users. These transactions can be linked or the transaction history stored data. In IoT, the collection of devices leads to the generation
can be linked to disclose the user’s identity [29,249]. Various of a huge amount of data that needs to be efficiently stored for easy
researchers propose methods against privacy to link pseudonyms access and fast processing. Since IoT devices are characterized by less
with IP addresses [63]. computational and storage resources thus the generated data is to be
• Security of Private Key: BC uses asymmetric key cryptography, stored at some other location. In conventional methods, data is stored
which means it uses public and private key pairs. If the private in a centralized infrastructure that suffers from security, privacy, and
key of the user is compromised then all the transactions will be single-point-of-failure. Using blockchain, IoT data can be stored in a
leaked. Maintaining the security of the private key is of utmost distributed manner (i.e, replicated at all the nodes in the blockchain
importance [40,249]. network). However, it is a major concern how blockchains can cater
• Non-Compliance to Privacy Laws: As blockchain is a distributed to such data storage demands from IoT systems. On the one hand, the
ledger, participating nodes are from across the world, which distributed ledger helps in improving the security and availability of the
raises privacy issues. A key point is that the miners are spread stored data and makes a blockchain-based IoT system decentralized.
across different countries and thus it is not clear which privacy On the other hand, the distributed nature of the database results in
law(s) will be applied [250]. For instance, this may be decided a storage challenge because with time IoT devices will exponentially
based on the location of the miner who mined the new block or increase in number and blockchain does not allow delete operations
the location where the transaction occurs [250]. since is designed to be an append-only database.
• Selfish Mining: Selfish mining was first reported by Eyal and Table 17 encapsulates the data storage aspect of BC.
Sirer [251]. When any malicious node mines the block but does
not reveal that block and starts maintaining his/her private 4.3.1. Challenges related to the IoT data storage
blockchain and still the other blocks are busy mining that block This section aims to bring the focus of the readers towards the
and the malicious node starts mining the next block without any challenges related to data storage. The continuous increase in the size of
competition and when this malicious node’s chain becomes longer the blockchain will increase the difficulty for the full nodes to continue
than the original chain then he reveals that chain. At this point, their participation in blockchain-based IoT systems. As a result, there
honest miners think that as the selfish miner’s chain is longer, will be less number of full nodes driving the blockchain at a given point
has a large number of blocks mined, done more proof of work, in time making the system less decentralized. Variable block sizes are
this is the original chain and starts mining and adding the block not the optimum solution to solve this issue. If we try to store a large
to the selfish miners’ chain. Before the private branch is revealed number of transactions in a single block this will put an additional
the honest miners are wasting their resources [252] on a useless strain on full nodes. The speed to process a transaction depends on
branch [29,238]. block size and block interval. Increasing the block size will improve
• 51% Attack: It is one of the most well-known security attacks and the throughput but take more time to propagate the block to other
is also known as a majority attack. In this attack, if the hashing nodes and reducing the block interval reduces latency but leads to
power of an individual miner or a pool of miners becomes more instability [263].
than 50% of the complete blockchain then the attacker or the
malicious node can roll back the transaction, cause a double- 4.4. Consensus algorithm
spending problem, and modify the order of transaction [63,238,
249]. Blockchain is distributed and decentralized in nature, which means
the nodes are geographically spread. Whenever a new transaction

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Table 16
Summary of technical aspect — security and privacy.
Reference Technical aspect Proposed solution
Islam et al. [253] Highlighted the security, trust, and privacy concerns Proposed a blockchain-based smart contract approach to resolve security and
in IoT-enabled smart homes. privacy issues in IoT devices.
Zhao et al. [254] Highlighted the remote data integrity checking and Proposed a blockchain-driven privacy-preserving scheme for IoT using
involvement of third parties. EC-ElGamal cryptosystem, bilinear pairing, and aggregated signature.
Rahman et al. [255] Discussed the security and privacy issues with IoT Proposed architecture for smart buildings called DistBlockBuilding (disseminated
devices and how distributed ledger and blockchain block building) for safe and secure data transfer.
technology had resolved these issues.
Agrawal et al. [26] Discussed the open issues in IoT, i.e., lack of trust and To resolve this issue, the author proposed a blockchain-based IoT security
single point of failure. solution.
Al et al. [256] Highlighted the smart healthcare system and the Proposed a blockchain-based privacy-preserving architecture for healthcare data
issues such as security and privacy of data. to attain accountability, integrity, and security.
Azbeg et al. [257] Highlighted the IoT-enabled devices such as wearables Proposed a blockchain-based architecture for self-managed follow-ups. The
and medical sensors for diabetes self-management. proposed architecture includes connected devices, blockchain networks, smart
contracts, and medical teams.
Dorri et al. [172] Highlighted the core components and functions of Also proposed a blockchain-based architecture to improve security in terms of
IoT-enabled smart home. confidentiality, integrity, availability, and performance evaluation in terms of
packet overhead, time overhead, and energy consumption.
Dwivedi et al. [258] Talked about IoT and remote patient monitoring and Highlighted the security concerns and proposed a blockchain-based architecture
also the concerns related to privacy and security such for IoT devices.
as the transfer of medical data.
Mohanty et al. [259] Highlighted the concerns related to the IoT such as Proposed an efficient lightweight integrated blockchain architecture and deployed
resource constraints, centralization, and lack of is in the smart home environment.
privacy, and the advantages provided by blockchain
technology.
Ouaddah et al. [260] Highlighted the access control challenges in IoT and Proposed a decentralized, pseudonymous, and privacy-preserving framework
how blockchain can be useful to resolve this based on blockchain to manage access control.
challenge.
Qian et al. [261] Presented the opportunities IoT provides and also the Highlighted the three layers of IoT and the security issues at each layer.
challenges it carries like privacy and security issues. Proposed a decentralized scheme for enhancing security based on blockchain for
different IoT devices.
Si et al. [262] Highlighted the issues related to conventional IoT Proposed blockchain-enabled information sharing IoT security framework by
information-sharing approaches such as positioning using a double chain model and improved practical byzantine fault-tolerant
security problems. consensus algorithm.

Table 17
Summary of technical aspect — data storage.
Reference Technical aspect Proposed solution
Wang et al. [34] Discussed the potential blockchain design in IoT Discussed the off-chain storage in which data can be stored
applications and also discussed possible solutions to separately at another place and for indexing using a pointer.
reduce storage costs.
Hepp et al. [264] Discussed the storing data in the chain itself, i.e., For on-chain storage, the size of the block can be variable to store
on-chain, which leads to the question of how much data while for off-chain storage, suggested solutions like smart
data we can store in the main chain, Also discussed contracts and Distributed hash tables to maintain the link between
off-chain storage and the challenges in maintaining hash in the chain and physical storage.
the link between the hash stored in the main chain
and the physical storage location.
Eyal et al. [263] Discussed the alternatives to improve the latency and To improve the performance of the blockchain, the author talked
bandwidth of the blockchain. about federated chains, also known as side chains.
Back et al. [265] Discussed the performance issues of blockchain and Discussed the Pegged chain and its features.
their solutions.
Lu et al. [266] Present the comparison between on-chain and Suggested not to store private data on-chain and raw data can be
off-chain regarding what data should be stored stored off-chain while its hash is stored on-chain.
on-chain and off-chain.

arrives it must be validated by every node present in the network and As IoT involves a lot of connected devices, a large number of
only after validation, each node updates its copy of the ledger. This transactions occur. To involve each node and each node having equal
validation is performed by creating a general agreement between the rights, consensus algorithms are useful. Consensus algorithms help
nodes by using some algorithms known as consensus algorithms. As in creating consensus among the un-trusted parties involved in the
Blockchain is a distributed and decentralized approach, there is no public blockchain. Table 18 encapsulates the technical aspect consensus
centralized authority to validate and verify the transaction but with the algorithm of BC.
help of the consensus algorithm, they ensure that each block added to
the network is valid and verified, and agreed upon by all the nodes oth- 4.4.1. Challenges related to the consensus algorithm
erwise the challenges like double-spending attack can occur. Consensus Some of the challenges related to the consensus algorithm are
algorithms help in maintaining the integrity of the system and work presented in this section. The most commonly used consensus algorithm
against double-spending attacks [24]. Consensus Algorithms help in is PoW but it also has some limitations such as waste of resources
maintaining the sanctity of the data recorded on the blockchain [244]. meaning the nodes with high hashing power get more chance to mine

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Table 18
Summary of technical aspect — consensus algorithm.
Reference Technical aspect Proposed solution
Fernandez et al. [64] Discussed the power consumed by the PoW consensus Highlighted the solutions like PoS (Proof of Space) also known as
algorithm. PoW has a certain level of difficulty but at Proof of Capacity (PoC). Some other consensus mechanisms which
the same time also consumes a lot of energy. consumes less energy are PoS.
Reyna et al. [24] Highlighted the disadvantages of the PoW consensus Suggested using another alternative algorithm like PoS, DPoS, LPoS,
algorithm like high latency, low transaction rate, and PoB, Also suggested using private BC where the number of
high energy consumption. participants is limited.
Mahmoud et al. [40] Discussed the PoW algorithm in which miners solve Suggested using the Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm, one who has
difficult puzzles which consume a lot of electricity. more stake value will get the chance to append the block.
Alsunaidi et al. [268] Discussed the technical aspects such as node identity No solution is proposed.
management, power consumption, throughput, and
block creation speed.
Mingxiao et al. [267] Discussed that the nodes that have high hashing No solution is proposed.
power (computation power) will get the right to mine
the block and get the reward for mining the block,
which forces people to upgrade their hardware and
these systems consume a lot of energy.

Table 19
Summary of technical aspect — processing power.
Reference Technical aspect Proposed solution
Atlam et al. [3] The mining process requires very high computation Discussed an approach to speed up the mining process by
power. simultaneously using CPU & GPU in single machines (originally
proposed by [269]).
Xie et al. [84] PoW algorithm requires high computational power to Suggested using another consensus algorithm like PoS, DPoS.
mine the block.
Monrat et al. [63] In the PoW consensus algorithm, the miner needs to Suggested solution either to redesign the BC infrastructure or use
solve a difficult puzzle to compute the hash, which another consensus algorithm like PoS, which consumes less energy.
requires high computational power and modern
hardware resources, Energy consumption in
comparison to other payment systems is too high.
Golosova et al. [270] Discussed the high energy consumption. To validate a No solution is proposed.
transaction each node starts computing solutions for
which they are using an enormous amount of
computer power. Each node is repeating the same
process which is a waste of resources.

the block and for this purpose, nodes spend a lot of money on up- capabilities and all of them will not be able to run the same encryption
grading hardware. These machines consume a lot of energy in solving algorithm at the required speed [14].
puzzles [267]. But if the hashing power of the mining pool is more than Table 19 encapsulates the processing power aspect of BC.
50% then it will be a concern for the network as they have control of
the network and they can reverse the transactions [267]. Other than
this, PoW is also not suitable for real-time payments because of the 4.5.1. Challenges related to the processing power
creation speed of a block [60]. Also, pool mining is possible in PoS Each miner present in the network starts mining the block and the
(proof-of-stake) and difficult to prevent [60]. one who mines the block first will get the chance to append the block to
the blockchain with some corresponding reward. To receive the reward
4.5. Processing power for mining the block, each participating node starts mining the block
which requires a huge amount of energy. As each node is repeating the
Whenever a new technology comes into the market, one of the same process, this leads to a waste of resources. The energy consump-
things that need to be considered before its adoption is that it must tion rate of the Bitcoin network has set a new benchmark. According to
be energy efficient. In the case of BC technology, the mining pro- a report by the bitcoin energy consumption index, VISA has consumed
cess requires very high computational power and modern hardware a total of 740,000 Gigajoules of energy for all its operations which is
resources. BC is a distributed and decentralized approach, whenever less than the energy consumed in the bitcoin mining process [271]. Also
a new transaction occurs it is validated by generating the consensus according to the same report carbon footprint of a single mined bitcoin
between the participating nodes [3]. Every time a new transaction is equal to the worth of mining gold [271].
occurs it is broadcast to all the other users in the network and miners
start mining the block for this, they are using a considerable amount of
5. Lesson learned and future work
computer power. It is also a waste of resources when each node repeats
the same process [84].
Let us take bitcoin as an example, for validating the transactions BC for IoT is a profoundly dynamic research topic. There are many
PoW consensus algorithms are used which requires a high amount of research areas with significant degrees of challenges that should be
energy with modern hardware [63]. Depending upon the resources handled in a modern way. Furnishing new arrangements should be
available the transaction processing speed in bitcoin is very less com- limited to specific prerequisites and limitations like low complexity and
pared to other existing systems such as VISA payment systems. So it reliability. This segment momentarily talks about lessons learned from
is very important to increase the processing speed in the blockchain. related works and conceivable future directions in incorporating BC and
IoT includes several divergent types of devices with various computing IoT.

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5.1. Healthcare IoT-enabled homes. Moreover, use of access control list and Lamport
Merkle Digital Signature algorithm has been suggested by researcher
5.1.1. Lessons learned for authorization. The most preferred consensus algorithm is PoW by
Despite the hype around smart healthcare system, it faces many researchers. But PoW adds an extra cost which can be removed and
challenges, such as data sharing, data integrity, privacy, and access can be mined by the homeowner. The secondary focus while leveraging
control. Here BC technology has proved the potential to resolve these BC for smart homes is energy management. For this consortium BC
challenges such as patient details, doctor’s records, patient’s medi- with PBFT consensus algorithm has been suggested. Some researchers
cal history, and pharmaceutical supply chain can be stored on BC. have suggested tiered architecture for efficient integration of BC and
Moreover, integrating BC with healthcare will reduce the counterfeit IoT-enabled smart homes. Use of smart contracts running on top of
medicines and instruments supplied to hospitals and can inform the BC have been also found efficient for ensuring tight access control
authorities about discrepancies because of the transparency in the and authentication in smart homes. Moreover, proxy signature, Kalman
network. But at the same storing a large amount of data directly on the filters, and private BCs have also been used by researchers for achieving
main chain is a challenge. To resolve this, researchers suggested use of authentication and monitoring of IoT devices in smart homes.
either side chains and cloud storage as off-chain solution. BC also helps
in maintaining privacy among the users and provides a single platform 5.2.2. Future work
where all previous and present data can be accessed. Some of the • Access control attack: If the intruder gets access to the device
authors suggested using private BC to exercise tight control access and controlling the activities in a smart home then the intruder can
maintain features like privacy and security and confidentiality of the do malicious activities [106]. It is important to design an access
information. Use of both private and public BCs have been suggested by control system to permit the third person or guests in the house.
various researchers. Many works suggest use of cloud storage or IPFS to This permission will be given based on access records generated
store a large amount of data since the storage capacity is limited and by IoT devices and stored permanently using blockchain [106].
BC adds data in append-mode only. For storing data on the cloud or • Inter-operability: A smart home consists of different appliances
other chain, a hash of the data is stored on the main chain. and it is difficult to communicate with each other. It is important
to work in the direction to achieve interoperability among the
5.1.2. Future work devices.
A lot of data is generated on daily basis in healthcare systems like • Privacy and security: Although blockchain provides robust secu-
patients’ personal records, medical history, and medical reports like rity and privacy, many other malicious attacks are possible. So, it
MRI, CT Scan, Ultrasounds, and many more. As BC supports immutabil- is important to research more to improve privacy of user data.
ity but according to EU regulations, patients will have the right to get
their data erased whenever they want. 5.3. Smart city

• Data storage: In the healthcare system lots of data are generated 5.3.1. Lessons learned
like medical scanning/imaging, reports, and other such large-size Smart cities can be defined as cities equipped with modern, smart,
data. Storing such a big amount of data is a challenge as BC and connected amenities that make the lives of citizens easier. Due
supports only a limited amount of data to be stored on-chain as to rapid urbanization and the increase in population, cities are facing
bigger data leads to latency and less throughput [87]. many challenges. Here BC can serve as a possible solution because
• Security and privacy: Healthcare data contain sensitive and of the features it offers like improved reliability, better fault toler-
personal information about the patient which must remain secure. ance capability, and faster and more efficient operations. The idea of
The intruder can attack and can steal a patient‘s details or else combining BC with a smart city provides a platform for communi-
can make it difficult to share details between hospitals which can cation, supports data integrity, motivates organizations like schools,
lead to the wrong diagnosis and come to know everything about hospitals, and government entities to share data transparently, and
your medical history. Achieving privacy and the ability to access saves individuals’ time. For maintaining privacy and security, SDN
sensitive information are the major challenges. with BC is used with PoW consensus algorithms with private BC.
• Interoperability: In the healthcare domain there is a huge num- Different frameworks include mainly four layers physical, database,
ber of interconnected devices and all these devices must commu- communication, and interface layer. Numerous researchers suggested
nicate with each other. All the users (different stakeholders such off-chain storage like IPFS, cloud storage, and private BC along with
as patients and health personnel) have multiple types of devices BC-enabled on-chain for data storage. This will help in the personal
communicating with each other, which requires coordination data sharing challenge. While some of the authors suggested using
between multiple users. Hyperledger fabric to maintain authentication and authorization. For
• Standardization: BC technology is in its beginning stage and data integrity, digital signatures and hashing are preferred. For energy
whenever a new technology emerges, it requires some widely- management in smart cities, hyperledger fabric is used to maintain
applicable standards from Standard Development Organizations confidentiality and Kafka algorithm for authentication.
(SDOs) such as ISO [272]. [273] lists out the basic standardiza-
tion organizations and their efforts to standardize blockchain. [274] 5.3.2. Future work
calls attention to various standardization organizations and their • Security and privacy: As blockchain is a distributed ledger it
publications about blockchain. But still, there are no globally ac- does not guarantee the privacy of the user’s data, as all the data is
cepted standards and protocols for the applicability of blockchain. shared among all the nodes present in the network. Another issue
in BC is that each node has blockchain generated address and its
5.2. Smart homes real identity is not revealed.
• Throughput: Throughput of the blockchain depends upon the
5.2.1. Lessons learned number of transactions inside a block which is restricted by block
A smart home is defined as a home where all the appliances installed size. The number of transaction rates must be improved for faster
in the house are connected through the Internet and can communi- services.
cate and share data. This process involves significant amount of data • Storage: Applying blockchain technology in smart cities will
generation. BC technology enables IoT devices to communicate and generate a huge amount of data which leads to data storage issues.
share data. The primary focus is to maintain security and privacy in To manage such large amount of data is another primary focus.

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

• Energy efficiency: For any transaction to occur, nodes present 5.5.2. Future work
in the network need to create consensus among themselves for Integrating BC with autonomous vehicles brings many challenges
which they need to solve hard computations which consume a along with it like motivating vehicles to share road-related messages
large amount of electricity. So, the proposed system must be also it is important to design a trust management system.
energy efficient.
• Scalability: In autonomous vehicles, lots of data are generated in
the case of connecting vehicles to be shared as road information,
5.4. Supply chain management traffic jam, traffic lights, etc. All this requires memory to store.
Data growing rate is 40% as compared to IT which is 5% [275].
5.4.1. Lessons learned
5.6. Smart grid
The major application of BC in supply chain management is to trace
and keep the track of the products. Also, BC helps in secure sharing
5.6.1. Lessons learned
information among all the entities involved in the supply chain. Tracing Smart grid are build to offer optimized and uninterrupted power
and sharing information about the product not only prevents counter- supplies to user, however, it faces issues like non-trusted data collec-
feiting of products but also provides transparent information about the tion, privacy leakage, centralized generation and distribution, insecure
product. Ethereum BC with PoC, BigChainDB, off-chain storage, and power system, and energy thefts. BC supports features like immutabil-
double chains are some of the solutions proposed by researchers. For ity, non-repudiation, and decentralization, which makes it the intrigu-
monitoring or real-time tracking Ethereum and Hyperledger sawtooth ing solution for achieving security, privacy, and trust in smart grid
with IoT and RFID have been used to ensure unique identification of systems. For storing meter readings and electricity consumption, BC
items. While some other researchers discussed hyperledger fabric BC as can be used. Also in the future, IoT-enabled device-to-device electricity
it has better performance. For credit evaluation, BC with deep learning trading and payments can be done through BC [84]. BC-enabled P2P
has been used. Smart contracts are also used for payments and smooth energy trading platform allows decentralized selling of excess energy by
transactions. one consumer to other consumer who are in need. While SHA-256/512
are the most preferred hashing algorithms, researcher have used RSA
with zero knowledge proof and an elliptic curve algorithm to enhance
5.4.2. Future work access control and authorization. Another important focus is charging
Here are some challenges that need to be resolved while integrating coordination among the users for which BC and smart contract enabled
BC with supply chain management. smart grid have been advocated.
• Adoption of technology: The major hurdle in adopting
5.6.2. Future work
Blockchain technology is making people aware of the adaptability
According to a bitcoin energy consumption report, for carrying
of blockchain technology due to lack of knowledge and lack of
out thirty million transactions thirty billion kWh of electricity was
skills to use the technology [67]. consumed [87]. If we integrate BC with a smart grid, it will require
• Throughput performance: As blockchain is decentralized in na- a lot of energy as the number of transactions is a direct multiple of
ture, each transaction needs approval from all the other nodes 1000.
present in the network, which brings consensus among the nodes.
This validation process and size of the block limits the throughput • Scalability: In the energy sector, the number of transactions is
of the blockchain [147]. very high and energy consumption for such BC-based transactions
• Security: In the supply chain the privacy of the manufacturer and will be very high. Thus, scalability is a challenge.
supplier is the most important issue. Any one of the participating • Centralization: The chances of centralization are because all the
entities in the blockchain network can be a competitor and can miners form a mining pool to solve the PoW consensus algorithm
misuse the information flowing in the supply chain [67]. and which can further lead to a 51% attack.
• Inter-operability: A supply chain consists of different nodes, all • Implementation Cost: Integrating blockchain with smart grids
of which need to communicate and share information between requires high infrastructure cost because of restructuring the
different nodes [67]. current grid network. So, implementing BC in existing smart grid
is a challenge.

5.5. Autonomous vehicle 5.7. Unmanned aerial vehicle

5.5.1. Lessons learned 5.7.1. Lessons learned

Autonomous vehicles connected, smart, and driverless vehicle that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones or Flying
Robots [224], are self-regulating devices accessed through remotes
can communicate or exchange data with other vehicles or infrastruc-
or sometimes self-controlled and do not require a human pilot. BC
ture. Use of autonomous vehicles help in reducing accidents, reducing
has huge potential for encouraging the benefits of UAV-based appli-
traffic congestion, increasing lane capacity, and efficient parking. How-
cations. By implementing BC technology, governments across different
ever, security, privacy, trustless sharing, provenance are some of the
geographical locations can keep an eye on the UAVs flying in their
required features which can be achieved with the use of BC in IoT-
domains. With the expanding prominence of UAVs, their utilization in
enabled autonomous vehicles. Some of the important use of BC for metropolitan territories has additionally expanded. BC enables UAVs to
autonomous vehicles are energy trading between electric vehicles and be outfitted with features like immutability, distribution, and decentral-
charging stations, information sharing, vehicle-to-vehicle communica- ization which makes UAVs a prominent approach for applications that
tion, and road-related messages such as road conditions and traffic carry critical information such as defense, healthcare, surveillance, and
congestion [84]. Use of Hyperledger Fabric, off-chain storage, and financial applications. For communication among the UAV’s, Ethereum
the Diffie hellman key exchange algorithm have been proposed for BC with IPFS storage is mostly used by different researchers. Although
payments in AV. To ensure scalability, off-chain storage and separate the use of BC for UAVs results in increase in overall processing time but
chains have been proposed. Data is stored on independent sources and it results in reduction in attack rates. For data collection, PoA consensus
their indexes are stored on the main chain. is used with Geth Ethereum BC. A few of the researchers, for health

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

monitoring using UAV, also used the PoA consensus algorithm in data Data availability
collection. Whereas few other researchers have also preferred the Kafka
consensus algorithm with hyperledger fabric and smart contracts. No data was used for the research described in the article

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[249] X. Li, P. Jiang, T. Chen, X. Luo, Q. Wen, A survey on the security of blockchain Shikha Mathur received her B.Tech. degree in 2013 and
systems, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 107 (2020) 841–853. M.Tech. degree in 2016 in computer science and engi-
[250] A. Kalla, T. Hewa, R.A. Mishra, M. Ylianttila, M. Liyanage, The role of neering (First class honors) from the Rajasthan Technical
blockchain to fight against COVID-19, IEEE Eng. Manag Rev 48 (3) (2020) University, Kota. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree
85–96. from Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India. She has
[251] A. Sapirshtein, Y. Sompolinsky, A. Zohar, Optimal selfish mining strategies authored over 10 publications. Shikha has over three years
in bitcoin, in: International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data of experience with esteemed organizations of Rajasthan, in
Security, Springer, 2016, pp. 515–532. academics, project progress documentation, and graduate
[252] S. Kim, G.C. Deka, Advanced Applications of Blockchain Technology, Springer, student co-supervision/mentoring, skills. Shikha’s research
2020. interests are cryptography and blockchain/DLT.
[253] M.N. Islam, S. Kundu, IoT security, privacy and trust in home-sharing economy
via blockchain, in: Blockchain Cybersecurity, Trust and Privacy, Springer, 2020,
pp. 33–50. Anshuman Kalla (Senior Member IEEE) is working as Pro-
[254] Q. Zhao, S. Chen, Z. Liu, T. Baker, Y. Zhang, Blockchain-based privacy- fessor at the Department of Computer Engineering, CGPIT,
preserving remote data integrity checking scheme for IoT information systems, Uka Tarsadia University (UTU), India. Dr. Kalla has more
Inf. Process. Manage. 57 (6) (2020) 102355. than twelve years of teaching and research experience. He
[255] A. Rahman, M.K. Nasir, Z. Rahman, A. Mosavi, S. Shahab, B. Minaei-Bidgoli, has worked as a Postdoctoral Visiting Researcher at Center
Distblockbuilding: A distributed blockchain-based sdn-iot network for smart for Wireless Communications (CWC), University of Oulu,
building management, IEEE Access 8 (2020) 140008–140018. Finland. He graduated as an Engineer from Govt. Engineer-
[256] A. Al Omar, M.S. Rahman, A. Basu, S. Kiyomoto, Medibchain: A blockchain ing College Bikaner in 2004. He did Master of Science in
based privacy preserving platform for healthcare data, in: International Confer- Telecommunications and Wireless Networking from ISEP,
ence on Security, Privacy and Anonymity in Computation, Communication and Paris, France in 2008 and another Master from University
Storage, Springer, 2017, pp. 534–543. of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France in 2011. He obtained a
[257] K. Azbeg, O. Ouchetto, S.J. Andaloussi, L. Fetjah, A. Sekkaki, Blockchain Ph.D. degree in 2017. Dr. Kalla was recipient of Master’s
and IoT for security and privacy: A platform for diabetes self-management, scholarships for pursuing both the Master programs. He
in: 2018 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technologies and has published papers in reputed international journals such
Applications (Cloudtech), IEEE, 2018, pp. 1–5. as Elsevier (JII, IPM, JNCA, COMNET, ICT Express), IEEE
[258] A.D. Dwivedi, G. Srivastava, S. Dhar, R. Singh, A decentralized privacy- Consumer Electronics Magazine, IEEE OJ-COMS, IEEE Com-
preserving healthcare blockchain for IoT, Sensors 19 (2) (2019) 326. puter, and IEEE EMR. His area of interests are Blockchain,
[259] S.N. Mohanty, K. Ramya, S.S. Rani, D. Gupta, K. Shankar, S. Lakshmanaprabu, 5G, 6G, IoT, Information Centric Networking, Software
A. Khanna, An efficient lightweight integrated blockchain (ELIB) model for IoT Defined Networking, Next Generation Networks. For more
security and privacy, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 102 (2020) 1027–1037. info: https://sites.google.com/site/kallanshuman
[260] A. Ouaddah, A. Abou Elkalam, A.A. Ouahman, Towards a novel privacy-
preserving access control model based on blockchain technology in IoT, in:
Europe and MENA Cooperation Advances in Information and Communication
Technologies, Springer, 2017, pp. 523–533. Gürkan Gür (Senior Member, IEEE) is a senior lec-
[261] Y. Qian, Y. Jiang, J. Chen, Y. Zhang, J. Song, M. Zhou, M. Pustišek, Towards turer at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
decentralized IoT security enhancement: A blockchain approach, Comput. – Institute of Applied Information Technology (InIT) in
Electr. Eng. 72 (2018) 266–273. Winterthur, Switzerland. He received his B.S. degree in
[262] H. Si, C. Sun, Y. Li, H. Qiao, L. Shi, IoT information sharing security mechanism electrical engineering in 2001 and a Ph.D. degree in com-
based on blockchain technology, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 101 (2019) puter engineering in 2013 from Bogazici University in
1028–1040. Istanbul, Turkey. His research interests include Future In-
[263] I. Eyal, A.E. Gencer, E.G. Sirer, R. Van Renesse, Bitcoin-ng: A scalable ternet, 5G, and Beyond networks, information security, and
blockchain protocol, in: 13th {𝑈 𝑆𝐸𝑁𝐼𝑋} Symposium on Networked Systems information-centric networking. He has two patents (one in
Design and Implementation ({𝑁𝑆𝐷𝐼} 16), 2016, pp. 45–59. the US, one in TR) and published more than 80 academic
[264] T. Hepp, M. Sharinghousen, P. Ehret, A. Schoenhals, B. Gipp, On-chain vs. works. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of
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(5–6) (2018) 283–291.
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Poelstra, J. Timón, P. Wuille, Enabling blockchain innovations with pegged
sidechains, 72, 2014, URL: http://www.opensciencereview.com/papers/123/ Manoj Kumar Bohra (Senior Member, IEEE) is currently
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[266] Q. Lu, X. Xu, Adaptable blockchain-based systems: A case study for product received bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engg.
traceability, IEEE Software 34 (6) (2017) 21–27. (CSE) from MBM Engg. College, Jodhpur, India in 2003
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algorithm of blockchain, in: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, MNIT Jaipur, India in 2011 and 2017 respectively. He is
Man, and Cybernetics, SMC, IEEE, 2017, pp. 2567–2572. having 15+ years’ experience in academia and research.
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technology, in: 2019 International Conference on Computer and Information in Health Care IoT, Security, Blockchain Technology and
Sciences, ICCIS, IEEE, 2019, pp. 1–6. Networks-on-Chip (NoC).
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2014 IEEE 27th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering,
CCECE, IEEE, 2014, pp. 1–6.
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Madhusanka Liyanage (Senior Member, IEEE) received
technology, in: 2018 IEEE 6th Workshop on Advances in Information, Electronic
his B.Sc. degree (First Class Honours) in electronics and
and Electrical Engineering, AIEEE, IEEE, 2018, pp. 1–6.
telecommunication engineering from the University of
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Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, in 2009, the M.Eng. degree
digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, Accessed on 24.05.2021.
from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand,
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in 2011, the M.Sc. degree from the University of Nice
for major internet disruptors: Blockchain, intents, and related paradigms, IEEE
Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France, in 2011, and the Doctor of
Commun. Stand. Mag. 2 (3) (2018) 14–15.
Technology degree in communication engineering from the
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University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, in 2016. From 2011 to
Commun. Stand. Mag. 2 (3) (2018) 16–21.
2012, he worked as a Research Scientist at the I3S Labo-
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ratory and Inria, Sophia Antipolis, France. He is currently
standards and recommendations, Future Internet 12 (12) (2020) 222.
an assistant professor/Ad Astra Fellow at the School of
[275] E. Al Nuaimi, H. Al Neyadi, N. Mohamed, J. Al-Jaroodi, Applications of big
Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland. He is
data to smart cities, J. Internet Services and Appl 6 (1) (2015) 1–15.
also acting as an adjunct Professor at the Center for Wire-
less Communications, University of Oulu, Finland. He was
also a recipient of the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie

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S. Mathur et al. Computer Networks 227 (2023) 109726

Actions Individual Fellowship during 2018-2020. During Australia, LIP6, Sorbonne University, France and Computer
2015-2018, he has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Science and Engineering, The University of Oxford, U.K. He
CSIRO, Australia, the Infolabs21, Lancaster University, U.K., is also a senior member of IEEE. In 2020, he has received
Computer Science and Engineering, The University of New the "2020 IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher"
South Wales, Australia, School of IT, University of Sydney, award by IEEE ComSoc EMEA. Dr. Liyanage’s research
interests are 5G/6G, SDN, IoT, Blockchain, MEC, mobile,
and virtual network security. More info: www.madhusanka.
com

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