LBlockchainE - A Lightweight Blockchain For Edge IoT-Enabled Maritime Transportation Systems PDF

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO.

2, FEBRUARY 2023 2307

LBlockchainE: A Lightweight Blockchain for Edge


IoT-Enabled Maritime Transportation Systems
Yu Jiang , Xiaolong Xu , Honghao Gao , Senior Member, IEEE, Adel D. Rajab,
Fu Xiao , Member, IEEE, and Xinheng Wang , Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract— Blockchain can help edge IoT-enabled Maritime 8.74 billion in 2020 to more than 25.4 billion IoT devices
Transportation Systems (MTS) in solving its privacy and secu- in 2030 [1]. The IoT technology also provides an informati-
rity problems. In this paper, a lightweight blockchain called zation method for maritime transportation. There are various
LBlockchainE is designed for edge IoT-enabled MTS to guarantee
the security of sensor data stored in an edge computing environ- research applications in existing transport systems, includ-
ment. To save the resources of edge servers on ship, a data place- ing navigation, road condition detection, and autonomous
ment strategy is proposed. To encourage edge servers to positively driving [40], [41], [42], [54]. The inclination sensor and
contribute to storing data generated by sensor devices, storage acceleration sensor on the ship need to upload the collected
resource consumption is employed as an influencing parameter, data of the inclination angle and acceleration during the
and servers with abundant resources are selected for priority
storage. The data placement strategy also takes care of the access running of the ship to the server to monitor the status of
delay between servers and selects the nodes with the least access the ship and ensure the safety of the ship with the help of
and storage costs as the priority storage choice. LBlockchainE cloud computing [2], [3], [4], [43], [44]. However, as the
applies the low-energy-consumption characteristics of Proof of number of IoT devices grows, so does the amount of data
Stake to determine the ownership of bookkeeping rights through produced in the network, making it difficult for cloud com-
a small number of competitive calculations and the resources
of the node. Experimental results indicate that compared with puting to handle large volumes of business. In addition, data
Ethereum, the consensus mechanism of LBlockchainE consumes transmission delays can cause users to have a bad experience.
less energy and occupies less storage space. On average, the new Therefore, edge computing [4], [5] is proposed to provide
system uses 1.6% less time and consumes 78% less battery power services to the Maritime Transportation Systems (MTS) that
compared with traditional blockchain systems. In comparison are closed to edge servers and have a short delay. An edge
to the random storage, the best storage, and the optimal data
storage strategies, the proposed strategy maintains the same cloud [3], [6], [13] is made up of edge servers in ships
message costs. that are close together to use server collaboration in order
to complete tasks from sensor devices more efficiently and in
Index Terms— Edge IoT-enabled MTS, blockchain, edge
computing, LBlockchainE, security. real time. Sensor devices that rely on distributed edge servers
owned by various enterprises and suppliers are dispersed and
I. I NTRODUCTION have limited processing capabilities. Due to the abundance

T HE rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT)


has made the connection between things closer, including
agriculture, medical industry, and manufacturing. The number
of maritime information, MTS was hit by cyber-attacks [42].
In the year 2020, the Mediterranean Shipping Company was
hit by a cyber-attack.
of IoT devices worldwide is forecast to almost triple from A blockchain [7], [21], [23] composed of blocks in a chain
Manuscript received 30 October 2021; revised 3 January 2022 and
structure has strong immutability and resistance to tampering
18 February 2022; accepted 3 March 2022. Date of publication 16 March by malicious nodes, which is similar to a distributed database.
2022; date of current version 8 February 2023. This work was supported by Blockchain technology can ensure that every node in the
the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62072255. The
Associate Editor for this article was A. K. Bashir. (Corresponding authors: blockchain has the right to verify the block via decentraliza-
Xiaolong Xu; Honghao Gao.) tion. However, blockchain issues have prompted many scholars
Yu Jiang is with the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Big Data Security Intelligent in academia to discover new research directions and propose
Processing, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing
210003, China (e-mail: [email protected]). their improved blockchain architecture [8], [9], [10], [11].
Xiaolong Xu and Fu Xiao are with the School of Computer Science, Nanjing The edge-IoT architecture [12] meets the deployment of
University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China (e-mail: blockchain so that the blockchain can play an important role in
[email protected]; [email protected]).
Honghao Gao is with the School of Computer Engineering and Science, guaranteeing data security. However, the sensor devices cannot
Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China (e-mail: gaohonghao@ bear the operation of the blockchain, and the blockchain can
shu.edu.cn). be deployed on the edge server. In order to save the resources
Adel D. Rajab is with the College of Computer Science and Infor-
mation Systems, Najran University, Najran 61441, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: of the edge server and use more resources for the services of
[email protected]). edge devices, it is necessary for MTS to develop a lightweight
Xinheng Wang is with the School of Advanced Technology, blockchain, which can not only retain the tamper proof ability
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou 215123, China (e-mail:
[email protected]). of the blockchain, but also save more computing and storage
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2022.3157447 resources.
1558-0016 © 2022 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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2308 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

In this paper, a lightweight blockchain for edge IoT-enabled TABLE I


MTS (LBlockchainE) is proposed to address security problems M ETHODS TO S OLVE THE S ECURITY P ROBLEMS
in the edge IoT-enabled MTS. The data generated by the sensor
devices on the ship is stored in the edge server supported
by LBlockchainE so that the data are not tampered with
and the MTS have higher privacy and operability. The main
contributions of this paper are summarized as follows:
1) A lightweight blockchain called LBlockchainE is pro-
posed for edge IoT-enabled MTS. To select suitable nodes for
storing data, a data location strategy takes into account the
number of storage resources in the server and the access cost
between edge servers. To save more computing and storage in IoT. Al-Garadi et al. [17] provided a comprehensive survey
resources, a new Proof of Stake (PoS) suitable for edge IoT- of ML methods and recent advances in DL methods that
enabled environments, which is combined with competition can be used to develop enhanced security methods for IoT
mechanism, is proposed to save resource consumption. systems. Alzahrani et al. [19] proposed an access control
2) LBlockchainE is used in the edge IoT-enabled service solution for Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)-based
composition to guarantee the reliability of the Quality of IoT services. Kouicem et al. [20] discussed the benefits of new
Service (QoS) with the assistance of step factor modification methods, such as blockchain and software-defined networking,
and the use of the cotangent perturbation to improve the firefly to the security and privacy of the IoT. Gao et al. [45] found
algorithm (FA) to balance local and global searches, eventually that malicious nodes may intercept or discard data packets,
obtaining the optimal solution. which might interfere with the transmission process and cause
3) In edge IoT-enabled MTS that is being built, a lightweight privacy leakage.
blockchain platform is realized. The computing clusters that The analysis of MTS security has undoubtedly received
make up the edge IoT-enabled experimental platform are considerable attention as presented in Table I. Huang et al. [46]
divided into three layers: data access, data placement, and analyzed that the existing IoT-enabled MTS are prone to single
consensus. The data access layer establishes a peer-to-peer points of failure and malicious attacks, and cannot provide
network and realizes the client access to the blockchain stable services. Teixeira et al. [26] simulated a combination
network, as well as block synchronization and other services. of different attack scenarios, such as false data injections and
The data placement layer implements the data location strategy zero-dynamics attacks. Mohanta et al. [47] analyzed that due
designed to store data in the edge IoT-enabled MTS. The to low processing power and storage capacity, smart things are
consensus mechanism in the consensus layer is based on the vulnerable to attacks because existing security or encryption
PoS improvement, which involves determining the right to technologies are not applicable. Gao et al. [48] proposed an
pack block based on the storage contribution of the edge automatic method of transforming Business Process Execution
server. Language into timed automata for formal verification, with
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: the aim of formalizing timed privacy requirements for the
Section II discusses related works. Section III proposes a IoT service composition. Gupta et al. [49] has developed an
lightweight blockchain called LBlockchainE. Section IV identity-based secure information sharing scheme for MTS to
describes the LBlockchainE-based prototype system. maintain proper identity verification measures. Liu et al. [50]
Section V discusses the experiments and security analysis. explored the safety performance of MTS based on digital twins
Finally, Section VI concludes the paper by summarizing the and IoT. This paper aimed to use blockchain technology to
main contributions of this paper and commenting on future address MTS security concerns.
work.

B. Blockchain
II. R ELATED W ORK
Blockchain technology has been widely used in cryptocur-
A. IoT and MTS Security rency since the emergence of Bitcoin [7]. Ethereum [21]
In recent years, many security and privacy issues have expands the application fields of the blockchain that deploys
emerged as a result of large-scale devices in IoT. In [14], [15], smart contracts to construct various decentralized applications
authors introduced the security challenges and privacy issues (DApp). A blockchain is a distributed ledger made up of
in IoT without discussing the solutions to these chal- blocks in a chain structure with the connection between them
lenges. Alaba et al. [16] discussed the privacy issues in the maintained by storing the hash value of the previous block.
smart grid and the main security vulnerabilities in the IoT. Each block in the blockchain packs transactions within a
Al-Garadi et al. [17] discussed IoT security threats that are certain period. The blockchain has so far not only acted as
related to inherent or newly introduced threats are presented, a platform for cryptocurrency transactions but has also been
and various potential IoT system attack surfaces and the widely used in data security and DApp, deriving many sce-
possible threats related to each surface. Some researchers have narios and applications [22]. Fabric, a Hyperledger subproject
proposed some solutions to security problems. Sicari et al. [18] for enterprises, is a blockchain development platform provided
studied the solutions of access control and trust management by Hyperledger [23], which is affiliated with the Linux

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2309

Foundation. In recent years, the project has become a widely blockchain. Biswas and Muthukkumarasamy [30] proposed a
used enterprise-level programmable blockchain, on which secure IoT framework for smart cities; it integrates blockchain
many leading Internet companies developing blockchain appli- and smart devices to provide a secure communication plat-
cations were based. IOTA [24] was proposed as the directed form. Dorri et al. [31] proposed a lightweight blockchain
acyclic graph structure to improve the speed and scalability of suitable for the IoT and tested the method in smart homes.
confirming transactions in the blockchain. IOTA is expected to Shen et al. [51] presented an efficient block-chain-assisted
solve the inefficiencies of traditional blockchains and provide secure device authentication mechanism BASA for cross-
a new direction for blockchain development as a typical domain Industrial Internet of Things to preserve the privacy
representative of the third-generation blockchain. of devices.
Each node in the blockchain is required to store complete Liao et al. [34] proposed a blockchain-enabled intelligent
ledger data so that the node can verify the data in each block task offloading strategy that mitigates various types of attacks
anytime. A newly generated block must be broadcast on the and increases the credibility of network entities by quantifying
network, according to the blockchain’s operation mechanism. the task offloading successful events. Munusamy et al. [35]
Each node will store more blocks as the blockchain’s running designed an edge-centric framework for analyzing the real-
time increases, taking up more storage space and incurring time data at the edge of the networks with minimum latency
higher transmission costs. Therefore, block storage overhead and power consumption while meeting the security and privacy
should not be ignored. The reduction of the transmission issue of MTS. Li et al. [37] proposed a blockchain-based
and storage costs of blocks has become a hot topic in collaborative edge knowledge inference (BCEI) framework
the current blockchain research. To allow nodes to form a for edge-assisted multi-robot systems, providing trusted edge
community, Xu et al. [8] proposed a consensus unit method collaborative inference in the presence of malicious nodes.
in which each autonomous fragmentation stores block data. Feng et al. [38] proposed a blockchain-enabled efficient
However, for public chains, the method has a significant query and secure data sharing model, applying blockchain and
overhead. By regularly creating snapshots of the blockchain, attribute-based encryption to ensure the security of instruc-
Marsalek et al. [9] proposed a compressible blockchain archi- tion issues and data sharing, and coping with the drone’s
tecture that can reduce the amount of data required to be open and untrusted environment. Dibaei et al. [39] explored
downloaded and stored. Dorri et al. [10] proposed a scalable cybersecurity defense mechanisms based on machine learning
blockchain for the IoT, which applies a distributed trust and blockchain against cyber-attacks in the vehicle network.
method for reducing the processing overhead for verifying new Shen et al. [52], [53] solved the problem of protecting data
blocks. Xu [11] proposed a new blockchain protocol that can privacy in the Vehicular Social Networks and smart cities
not only reduce storage overhead but also withstand large-scale by using the combination of blockchain and support vector
node drops. machines.
The above-mentioned researches only focus on the applica-
tion of blockchain in the IoT to solve the cyber-attacks and
C. Integration of Blockchain and MTS security issues, but do not take into account the problems of the
The deployment of blockchain systems is complicated by blockchain. The deployment of the blockchain requires high
the limited resources available in edge IoT-enabled MTS. storage and computing capabilities. Therefore, it is necessary
These resources need not only to support related application to design a blockchain that is suitable for deployment in the
services but also cache data frequently accessed by sensor edge IoT-enabled environment, especially MTS. This paper
devices, making it impossible to require each node to store aims to explore the design of a lightweight blockchain suitable
complete blockchain data. Multiple copies of data are usually for edge IoT-enabled MTS to solve the security problems in
placed in multiple data centers in cloud computing to respond the system.
to a large number of users’ requests. Therefore, access delays,
load balancing between data centers, data center energy III. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
consumption, and network transmission between data centers
need to be taken into account. To reduce the overhead of A. System Model
block transmission and storage, the blockchain system in edge Edge computing is derived from the content distribu-
computing should optimize and improve the blockchain. tion network, in which edge servers are deployed near the
Poor interoperability, device resource limitations, and pri- edge devices to provide services to reduce data transmission
vacy leakage are all risks associated with the IoT system. delay and can meet the requirements of real-time equipment.
Some studies have looked at how blockchain and IoT can work To form the edge IoT-enabled MTS architecture, MTS relies
together to improve interoperability and security in the IoT on edge computing to process collected data and make instant
system [27]. Dai et al. [28] applied blockchain to the medical decisions [12].
IoT and proposed solutions to combat COVID-19 and solve the The architecture of edge IoT-enabled MTS is presented in
medical IoT system’s privacy issues. Yang et al. [29] proposed Fig. 1. Edge IoT-enabled MTS contains a three-tier archi-
a decentralized trust management system for vehicle networks tecture, namely, core cloud, edge cloud, and sensor devices.
based on blockchain technology, which applies blockchain An edge cloud is composed of an edge orchestrator that
to save the trust value of vehicles and combines Proof of manages the collaborative work in the edge cloud and interacts
Work (PoW) and PoS to maintain a reliable and consistent with other edge clouds and many edge nodes in ship that

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2310 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

handle client tasks. When an edge cloud has difficulty in containing the basic information of the data item [32] is
processing tasks, it will access the core cloud via core proposed. Metadata is lighter and simpler compared with
networks and rent computing and storage resources to solve data items. Following the data, a corresponding metadata is
the overload problem [13]. The server can request data from generated, which is used to replace data items and packed
other edge servers if the data requested by the devices does not into blocks to reduce the block storage overhead. Instead of
exist on the adjacent server. To summarize, all edge servers saving copies in all nodes, it is necessary to select appropriate
can work together to complete tasks that are dependent on nodes to store the data uploaded by edge devices. As a
distance to meet real-time application requirements. result, to reduce data placement overhead and make network
transmission easier, an efficient data placement strategy is
B. A Lightweight Blockchain Called LBlockChainE required.
The server’s long-term operation will consume a significant
In the edge IoT-enabled MTS, sensor or smart devices
amount of power, which can be attributed to the server’s
collect data and then upload them to the edge server on ship
storage cost. When the edge cloud responds to a client
nearby. The edge server accepts access from devices without
or cloud request that they need corresponding data, it will
guaranteeing the reliability of the data storage environment.
request other servers that store data. The transmission of data
To enhance data security and integrity, blockchain technology
between servers will occupy network bandwidth, which results
is employed as a reliable tool for data. The lightweight
in transmission costs. Some nodes affiliated with different
blockchain-designed workflow for the edge IoT-enabled MTS
manufacturers are unwilling to provide their resources to
is presented in Fig. 2. Data is uploaded to the edge cloud, and
store data copies. Relevant parameters are set to incentivize
metadata is generated. The data location strategy helps the
resource-rich nodes to ensure the load balance of each node
edge cloud select appropriate edge nodes, and the metadata
in the edge cloud. A data placement strategy that takes power
item stores the data storage information. Each edge node
consumption and network transmission costs into account is
participating in the blockchain network competes for the rights
proposed and sets a balanced cost to encourage nodes with
to pack metadata items into blocks.
more remaining resources to store.
In LBlockChainE, each node participating in packing blocks
In this scenario, the blockchain is installed on each edge
is assigned a pair of keys in the system as a unique iden-
server in the edge cloud. Some nodes should be selected
tification. The public key is distributed to the public and
for data storage. The power consumption cost (BC) is then
simultaneously generates the node’s account, on which the
calculated. To meet clients’ access at any time, the server must
transactions of other nodes to the node are based. The private
be running at all times, which consumes a lot of power. The
key used to encrypt data can act as a digital signature, ensuring
BC of the node is defined as follows:
the data’s integrity or verifying the sender’s identity. When the
node packs the block successfully, it will leave its signature bci = ai μi + bi (1)
in the block. The packing node will receive the block reward
after the other nodes in the network verify that the block is where ai denotes the positive factor representing the power
correct. The miner’s reward is set to an “edge cloud coin” for consumption of the edge server esi in the peak; μi , the
simplicity’s sake, and the edge cloud coin will be used in the operating rate of the edge server esi ; and bi , the power
following section. consumption of the server esi in the idle state.
The structure of the block in LBlockchainE is presented The access overhead that other servers incur when they
in Fig. 2. The hash, timestamp, index, Merkle tree root of access data that they do not have is known as the network
the previous block, and the mining difficulty (which is the transmission cost (AC). The network transmission cost is as
mathematical difficulty) are all contained in the block header. follows:
The block body holds all of the block’s transaction data. The 
0, i= j
metadata is stored in the block body in the edge IoT-enabled ai j = (2)
MTS, which will be covered in greater detail in the next li nk(i, j ) + hop(i, j ), i = j
section. The current block’s hash is added to the block to
where li nk(i, j ) denotes the data transmission delay between
ensure connectivity between them. Furthermore, each block
the edge servers esi and es j , and hop(i, j ) denotes the route
saves the storage node’s location and the data associated with
propagation delay between the edge servers esi and es j .
it.
The cost of network transmission is determined by the
length of the connecting link and the number of hops for-
C. Problem Formulation warded by the router because edge servers are connected by
The entire data must be saved by all nodes participating in optical cables. When the two nodes are identical, the network
the blockchain. The edge server in the edge cloud must store transmission cost is 0. When the two nodes are different, the
not only the data generated by the devices but also various network transmission cost depends on the link length of the
network data caches. Contrary to the core cloud’s powerful connection corresponding to the data propagation delay and
data center, the edge server’s limited resources cannot support the number of hops, which corresponds to the router’s data
each node saving all of the data. Therefore, the data should be transmission delay. Both of them that occupy a major position
stored in nodes selected by the storage strategy. To reduce the in the total delay of the entire data cost is considered in this
cost of data storage, metadata composed of multiple attributes blockchain.

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2311

Fig. 1. Edge IoT-enabled MTS architecture.

The problem of data placement can be modeled as a multi-


constraint optimization problem. The power consumption,
network transmission, and incentive costs are integrated as
follows:  
mi n ai j x i j k + A (si + bci )yik
i∈V j ∈V i∈V

s.t. yik ST (k) ≤ STt o (i ), (∀i ∈ V )
k

x i j k ≥ 1, (∀ j ∈ V )
i∈V
yik − x i j k ≥ 0, (∀i, j ∈ V )
x i j k , yik ∈ {0, 1} (4)
where A denotes the factor for amplification used to increase
the weight that is set to 100000, and x i j k is an access variable.
This variable A is added to increase the weight of the first part
of the objective function, because the value calculated in the
first part is much larger than the second part in (4). If x i j k = 1,
Fig. 2. The lightweight blockchain designed for edge IoT-enabled MTS. the request of the edge server es j for access to the data item
k will be assigned to the edge server esi . yik is a storage
variable. When yik = 1, the data item k will be placed on the
A set of incentive parameters for node storage data copies
edge server esi . Constraint (1) ensures that the total size of
is defined as an incentive cost (SC). The SC of the edge server
data stored on the edge server esi does not exceed the server’s
esi can be defined as follows:
storage capacity. Constraint (2) ensures that at least one edge
⎧ server stores a copy of the data item k, and constraint (3)
⎨ Dk
, ST (i ) = 0 ensures that the data item k assigned to the edge server esi
si = STt o (i ) − ST (i ) (3)
⎩ places a copy of the data item k on the server accessed.
0, ST (i ) = 0

where STt o (i ) denotes the total storage capacity of the edge D. Consensus Mechanism
server esi ; ST (i ), the used storage capacity; and Dk , the size PoW, which is used in Bitcoin, allows nodes to use their
of the data k. If there are no remaining resources on the server, computing power to compute hash in order to compete with
the incentive cost is ∞, and no more data will be stored on each other, and the ratio of computing power determines the
the server later. probability of a node to be automatically selected. PoW has

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2312 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

where Dunit represents the size of the data block, which is


25 MB, to measure the amount of data stored by the edge
server esi .
In (5), t is set in that the node may have insufficient edge
cloud coins and stored resources. Due to the small range,
a small edge value will cause the target value to fall below the
standard. The range can be increased by using the time from
the previous block to the current block, causing the target value
to grow. The target value f i is as follows:
fi = H ash[ Accounti + noncei ] mod M (7)
where Accounti denotes the account address of the edge
server esi ; noncei , the random number calculated by the edge
server esi ; and M, the maximum possible value. When f i
satisfies (8), the right to mine the block is obtained by the edge
server esi .
fi ≤ Ei (8)
Fig. 3. Consensus mechanism designed in LBlockchainE. where E i denotes the edge value of the edge server esi , which
is determined by the edge cloud coin owned by the edge server
esi , the amount of the stored data, and the elapsed time from
the previous block. The range of E i will be greater when the
edge server esi has more edge cloud coins and stores more
data. To prevent the elapsed time between two blocks from
being large, causing the range of E i to be larger also, time
expectation t0 is used to control the elapsed time. The easier
it is for the edge server esi to obtain the smaller f i , the larger
Fig. 4. Service chain and candidate services. the range of E i . When f i does not meet the above formulation,
noncei needs to be changed until one node first obtains a f i ,
meeting the above formulation.
the disadvantage of consuming much energy, conflicting with
the edge server with finite resources. To represent the rights E. Service Composition Based on LBlockchainE
of nodes, PoS employs a set of resources. To reduce the
edge cloud’s internal storage resource consumption, a new In this paper, LBlockchainE is applied to the service com-
PoS containing the competition mechanism is proposed, which position to highlight its applicability. Edge servers affiliated
fully takes into account the contribution of each edge server with different companies are geographically dispersed in an
to store data. The edge cloud coin owned by the node and the edge cloud, which is deployed in base stations, routers,
amount of data stored give the corresponding node the right switches, and so on. Users have public access to these
to pack the block. infrastructures, in which services are extremely vulnerable to
In this paper, LBlockchainE can encourage all nodes in the malicious attacks. LBlockchainE can be applied to enhance
edge cloud to store data positively. As presented in Fig. 3, the the credibility of the QoS of the web services deployed in the
consensus mechanism should be set in such a way that nodes edge servers, preventing malicious nodes from tampering with
with more data storage are favored. the QoS of web services.
In LBlockchainE, an edge value (E) is defined. The greater The improved FA is used to apply LBlockchainE to service
the edge value, the more obvious it is that the node has a composition [33]. Cotangent initialization is employed to
block-mining advantage. The edge value is as follows: generate the random initial value, and cotangent disturbance
is used to overcome the shortcoming of the algorithm of being
E i = Ci Q i t (5) stuck easily at a locally optimal value. To balance local and
global search, the step factor and attractiveness formulation in
FA is reset. With the above methods, FA is improved to suit
In (5), Ci denotes the number of the edge cloud coin
high-dimensional service composition.
owned by the edge server esi , which can be obtained by
The brighter individuals in the population can attract each
mining new blocks. An edge cloud coin is awarded to a
firefly, according to FA. FA is applied to the service composi-
node in LBlockchainE for mining a block, which can also
tion in this paper, and each composition can be regarded as a
be traded between nodes. t denotes the elapsed time between
firefly individual that will be attracted by better compositions,
the previous block and this block. Q i is the amount of data
gradually approaching them. The position update formulation
stored in the edge server esi . The amount of data is as follows:
is expressed as follows:
 
Q i = ST (i )/Dunit (6) X i (t + 1) = X i (t) + βi j X j (t) − X i (t) + αβi (9)

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2313

where X i (t) denotes the position of the firefly individual i in where f denotes the fitness value; R, the product of the
the iteration t; X j (t), the position of the firefly individual j in reliability of each service in the service chain; T , the sum
the iteration t; αβi , a random term; and generally, βi , a random of the response time of each service in the service chain; C,
number, α ∈ [0, 1]. ri j is the Euclidean distance between the the sum of the execution costs of each service in the service
individual firefly i and the individual firefly j . The attraction chain; and A, the product of each service availability in the
formulation βi j is improved as follows: service chain. α is the weight of R, β is the weight of A, γ
represents the weight of T , η represents the weight of C, and
βi j = (β0 − βmin ) e−γ ri j + βmin
2
(10) α + β + γ + η = 1.
where β0 denotes the maximum attraction representing the Assuming a service chain L c = s0 → s1 → · · · →
attraction of the firefly in the original position, and the mini- s j → · · · → sm−1 , s j shown in Fig. 4 belongs to the service
mum attractiveness βmin is set to ensure that the attractiveness category S j :

between individuals is not zero. γ is the light absorption 1 1


coefficient which can be taken as a constant. If βmin is zero, Max α R + β A + γ + η
T C
the degree of attraction β approaches 0 as the distance between    
s.t. get Out put s j == get I nput s j +1 , s j ∈ L c
individuals approaches infinity, which will lead to the lack of
traction on other individuals and the ability to find the best. α+β +γ +η =1
If βmin is 0.25, when the distance is larger, even if
n 
n
R= Reli T = Ti
(β0 − βmin )e−γ ri j approaches 0, the attraction is not 0 due
2

i=1 i=1
to βmin , which can guarantee that there is minimum attraction n n
between individuals. C= Ci A = Availi (14)
i=1 i=1
During the convergence process of FA, the firefly individuals
where s j denotes the service j in the service chain;
should ideally gather and converge to a point in (9). The step
get I nput () and get Out put () can obtain the input set and
factor is getting close to zero.
output set of the corresponding service. α, β, γ , and η
In general, the step factor α is set to 0.5, and βi is set
represent the weight of each QoS attribute. R, T , C, and
to a random number. The third term in (9) is a completely
A respectively represent the product or sum of each QoS
random term that cannot be used during the algorithm when
attribute of the service chain, where R and A denote the
α is a fixed value. In this paper, to give full play to the
reliability that is the product of the reliability of each service
function of α in the algorithm, α is set to dynamically change.
and availability that is the product of the availability of each
To exert effective detection ability in the early stages of
service, respectively. T and C represent the execution time that
the algorithm, the random item must have a large random
is the sum of the time of multiple services and the execution
compensation. In the later stage of the iteration, it needs to
cost that is the sum of the total execution cost of multiple
perform effective searchability locally, and the step needs to
services, respectively.
be gradually reduced. Based on the above analysis, the step
The algorithm includes three steps:
formulation is set as follows:
Step 1: Globally search for a feasible service chain and find
α(t + 1) = α(t) · e−0.5t /Tmax (11) candidate services for each service in the service chain.
Step 2: Initialize the firefly individual chaotically through
As the algorithm progresses and the iteration increases, α the cotangent sequence.
gradually approaches 0 from 0.5. Step 3: Calculate each firefly’s fitness function value, weigh
In the early stages of the service composition algorithm, the benefits and drawbacks of each firefly, choose the best
cotangent initialization is used, and when the algorithm individual firefly as the object to be learned, and keep other
reaches the local optimum, cotangent perturbation is required. fireflies up to date. When a single firefly falls into a local
The formulation is as follows: optimum, that individual should try to get out of it as much
an+1 = cot (an ) (12) as possible. Individual fireflies’ positions are re-initialized
according to the cotangent sequence when cotangent distur-
where an denotes the one-time value of the cotangent bance is used. After re-initialization, it is necessary to search
sequence; the initial value of the cotangent sequence should be locally to find the local optimal value. The global optimal
satisfied with a0 ∈ (0, π) and iterated through the cotangent value will be replaced if the locally searched optimal value is
sequence formulation to generate a pseudo-random sequence. better than the historical global optimal combination plan, and
In the service composition scenario, the individual bright- the chaotic disturbance will be over. Otherwise, it is necessary
ness is specifically set to the fitness value, that is, the value to repeat the chaotic disturbance until a new global optimal
of the fitness function, which is used to evaluate the pros and solution is found or the cotangent disturbance iteration meets
cons of the service composition. the limit.
Reliability, response time, execution cost, and availability Algorithm 1 shows the steps of service composition algo-
are four QoS parameters included in the service composition. rithm. Calculate the fitness function value of each individual
The fitness function is as follows: firefly, evaluate the pros and cons of each individual firefly,
1 1 select the best individual firefly as the object to be learned, and
f = αR + β A + γ + η (13)
T C update other firefly individuals. When one firefly individual

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2314 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

Algorithm 1: Service Composition Algorithm


Input: N; I ; D; β0 ; βmin ; α0 ; γ ; scandi adateLi st
Output: G
BestBorder = setBestBorder()
for i = 1 to N do
//firefly initialization
X i = Initialize ()
//caculate the fitness value
Fi = ComputeFitness(X i )
end for
// compare and update the global optimal firefly
index = GetGlobalBest(Fi)
f Best = Findex
G = X index
while f Best! = Best Bor der and i ! = I do Fig. 5. Service composition with blockchain.
for i = 1 to N do
// update each firefly
X i = UpdatePosition(X i )
Fi = ComputeFitness(X i )
end for
index=GetGlobalBest(Fi )
f Best = Findex
G = X index
end while
return G

falls into a local optimum, the individual should jump out of


the local optimum as much as possible. By adopting cotangent
disturbance, the position of individual firefly is reinitialized
according to the cotangent sequence. After re-initialization,
it is necessary to search locally to find the local optimal
value. If the locally searched optimal value is better than the
historical global optimal combination plan, the global optimal
value will be replaced, and this chaotic disturbance ends.
Otherwise, it is necessary to repeat the chaotic disturbance
until a new global optimal solution is found or the cotangent
disturbance iteration meets the limit.
The service registry, which is managed by the edge orches-
tration manager, saves the QoS attribute values of the services,
which are also saved in LBlockchainE. The QoS value must Fig. 6. LBlockchainE-based platform structure.
be recalculated and saved in LBlockchainE after each service
ends. The candidate service set, which is the firefly’s bright- A data access layer, a data placement layer, and a consensus
ness, determines the fitness value of the corresponding service layer are all included in the structure. In addition, there
composition. The composition optimization method applies is an application layer that provides services for specific
LBlockchainE to realize the credibility of QoS attributes and applications by obtaining the support of the above three layers.
provide users with reliable services. As shown in Fig. 5, each
QoS value change will be stored as a transaction in the block,
and each node participating in packing the block can verify A. Data Access Layer
whether the QoS has been tampered with, so the QoS value Sensor devices upload data that includes the type of data,
obtained by the service combination needs to be obtained from the location where the data is generated, and the specific
the edge Obtained from the orchestrator, the user can query data to the edge cloud. A peer-to-peer network is what the
in the chain to check whether it has been tampered with. blockchain environment is all about. As shown in Fig. 7,
PeerNetwork class and RpcServer class need to be established.
IV. P ROTOTYPE S YSTEM The PeerNetwork class that contains PeerThread class used
A lightweight blockchain platform for edge IoT-enabled to help each node access other nodes allows nodes joining
MTS is designed and built based on LBlockchainE. The the blockchain system to communicate with each other, syn-
blockchain platform structure is presented in Fig. 6. chronize blocks, and so on. Each PeerThread class will call

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2315

Fig. 7. Data access class diagram.

the PeerReader class and the PeerWriter class for message


transmission between blockchain nodes.
Fig. 8. Data placement class diagram.
When the IoT devices upload data to the blockchain system,
the entire blockchain needs to process client access by the
RpcServer class. The RpcServer class contains the RpcThread first within the edge value. The node that packs the block will
class, which the client accessing the blockchain generates. The get the reward after the verification is passed.
system will return the response to the client after parsing the
corresponding request. D. Application Layer
LBlockchainE, which is designed in this paper, aims to
support the security of the data in the edge-IoT and provide
B. Data Placement Layer
a secure storage environment for the services. In this paper,
As shown in Fig. 8, the data placement strategy involves the LBlockchainE is used to provide security for the service
realization of three classes that include Node class, Particle composition to prevent malicious nodes from tampering with
class, and ParticleState class. Each blockchain node’s account related web services’ QoS attributes.
information, storage resources, edge cloud coins, and account
information are all stored in the Node class. The node’s right V. E XPERIMENTS AND S ECURITY A NALYSIS
to pack blocks is directly influenced by the related resources
A. Experimental Environment
and edge cloud coins. According to the related information,
the edge cloud orchestrator selects the best node to store Docker is used for simulation to test the performance of
data. The objective function is presented in (4). The particle LBlockchainE, in which containers are built through It is
swarm optimization algorithm is used to calculate the nodes also used to simulate each edge server in the edge IoT-
suitable for storing data, which is the Particle class containing enabled MTS. Sockets are used to transmit data between nodes
the ParticleState class used to initialize the position of the that are run by containers. Fig. 9 describes the experimental
particle and perform calculation operations. The data and environment. The experiments are conducted on four edge
corresponding metadata will be broadcast to the blockchain cloud computing systems. Several ship nodes make up each
network. The selected nodes will store the data. edge cloud system. The simulation was performed on a
computer equipped with an Intel Core i7-8700K processor
and 16 GB of RAM. In the experiment, it is assumed that the
C. Consensus Layer position of each node is located in the area of 200 m∗200 m,
and the expected interval time is set to 20 s.
The blockchain disseminates both the metadata and data.
The number of nodes on this blockchain platform will be
The metadata is broadcast in the network once the data is
limited by equipment, as thousands of nodes are added to the
stored on the selected node, and each node packs the received
real blockchain. In this experiment, the size of each data item
metadata. The consensus mechanism, which is at the heart
is about 700 B, and the generated block size is 670 B.
of the blockchain, determines which node will get the right
to pack blocks and thus the block rewards in the end. The
consensus mechanism class we designed in the blockchain B. Performance Statement
defines the method of obtaining the packing rights. In each Power consumption, block transmission cost, message trans-
round, the node calculates the account address and nonce to mission overhead, and data access delay are all factors in the
obtain the corresponding target value, according to (7). The experiment. When a block is packed, the power consumption
right to pack a block that can be broadcast and verified by a represents how much power is used. PoW, which consumes
blockchain node is obtained when the target value is calculated a lot of power resources in Ethereum, is compared with the

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2316 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

consensus mechanism in LBlockchainE. The power consump-


tion status of consensus mechanisms in different blockchain
systems can be determined by measuring power consumption
over the same number of blocks.
After a node successfully packs a block, the block will
be distributed to all nodes in the blockchain network for
verification. The transmission of a large number of block
transmission messages will occupy the network bandwidth
because a block contains multiple transaction information.
The amount of block information transmitted in the network
under the same number of blocks is utilized to calculate the
block transmission cost. In LBlockchainE, the complete data
information stored in the block is replaced with metadata,
which can reduce network bandwidth resources.
Message transmission overhead refers to the transmission Fig. 9. Experimental environment.
overhead of messages in the blockchain network. Data trans-
mission overhead will be generated as the data is only stored
on some nodes. The network transmission overhead must be
greater than the data placement strategy in LBlockchainE if
all nodes store data.
Data access between nodes will inevitably cause some delay
because some nodes store data. To ensure that LBlockchainE
can effectively control the time delay, the data placement
strategy is compared with the random storage strategy, optimal
storage strategy, and other strategies.

C. Performance Analysis
1) Power Consumption: To demonstrate the performance of
the consensus mechanism designed in this paper, the consensus Fig. 10. Power consumption.
mechanism is compared with the consensus mechanism of
Ethereum and that of Huang et al. [25] in the experiment.
The power consumption is measured by a power meter.
In the experiment, the electricity change of the same number
of blocks packed is measured for each blockchain. In this
experiment, the number of nodes in the blockchain is set
to 5, as is the difficulty of the block. As presented in Fig. 10,
with the increase in the number of blocks, although the power
consumption of the three consensus mechanisms is increasing,
the gap between the three gradually widens. Ethereum con-
sumes significantly more power than LBlockchainE, whereas
LBlockchainE consumes slightly less energy than that of
Huang et al. The results show that LBlockchainE reduces
the average power consumption by 92.21 % and 77.67%,
respectively, compared with the other two. Fig. 11. CPU usage percentage.
The above is a comparison of power consumption. In addi-
tion, the mining ability is also reflected in the CPU occu-
pation. The competition in the blockchain is reflected in the measurement of power consumption, which saves resource
the calculation of the hash, and the calculation work in consumption.
this experiment is undertaken by the CPU, so CPU usage The packing block condition in LBlockchainE is set to
percentage can be measured to show the power consumption. the target value within the range of the edge value, and
In this experiment, three comparison subjects run in the same calculating to the specified difficulty requires a large number
experimental environment, and the average CPU occupation of hash calculations if only PoW is utilized. Similar to the
was measured under packing a block. It can be seen from consensus mechanism of Huang et al. [25], the consensus
Fig. 11 that LBlockchainE designed in this paper occupies less mechanism of LBlockchainE also involves hash calculation
CPU resources than the other two, and reduces the resource and the competition mechanism, but the energy consumption
occupancy by 75.41% and 16.04%, respectively, compared of LBlockchainE is slightly lower than that of Huang et al.,
with the other two. The results are generally consistent with but both involve hash calculation.

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2317

Fig. 12. Block transmission cost. Fig. 14. Message transmission overhead.

Fig. 13. Message transmission overhead. Fig. 15. Message transmission overhead.

2) Block Transmission Cost: Metadata item is used to that as the number of nodes increases, the average message
replace data item and is packed into blocks to save the transmission cost per node using the random storage strategy
storage cost of the block. When compared with full data also gradually increases. The optimal data storage strategy
items, a metadata item extracts a portion of the information and the message transmission overhead of LBlockchainE are
from them, saving a lot of space. Ethereum and LBlockchainE nearly identical. The results show that compared with the other
are compared. As presented in Fig. 12, as the number three strategies, LBlockchainE reduces the average message
of packed blocks increases, the storage cost of the two- transmission consumption by 93.96%, 93.52% and 8.5%,
block formats also gradually increases. The results show that respectively.
LBlockchainE reduces the average block transmission cost As presented in Fig. 15, the message transmission overhead
by 30.14% compared with Ethereum. Since blocks need to of LBlockchainE is only slightly better than the optimal
be verified by blockchain nodes before they can be put into data storage strategy in that the latter only takes the link
the chain, broadcasting the blocks in the network will cost distance between nodes into account, not considering the
numerous transmission bandwidths. LBlockchainE reduces the transmission delay; thus, more nodes will be selected for
cost of block transmission in the network when compared with storing data, and data transmission between nodes will produce
Ethereum, according to the results of the experiments. higher transmission overhead than LBlockchainE. The random
3) Message Transmission Overhead: A comparison storage strategy will randomly select nodes for storage without
between generating one data item per minute and generating considering factors such as node resources and transmission
two data items per minute is performed to evaluate the data cost, whereas the best storage strategy is for nodes with a small
placement strategy of LBlockchainE. The experiment lasted number of resources without considering the transmission
7 h. The message transmission overhead increases as the cost and incentive factors. Thus, two strategies will produce
number of nodes increases, as presented in Fig. 13, but it is extremely high message transmission overhead.
obvious that the message transmission overhead is not large. 4) Data Access Delay: To evaluate the impact of the data
Under the same standard of generating 1 data item per placement strategy in LBlockchainE, it is compared with the
minute, as presented in Fig. 14, the experiment was conducted random storage, best storage, and optimal data storage strate-
under 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and 500 nodes, respectively, gies. The four strategies are performed under the same network
and the data placement strategy in LBlockchainE is compared environment. The length of the link and the number of route
with the random storage, the best storage, and the optimal hops are used to calculate the access cost. LBlockchainE has a
data storage strategies [25]. The experimental results indicate lower data access cost than the other strategies, as presented in

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2318 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

Fig. 16. Data access delay. Fig. 17. The number of hash calculations required by the consensus
mechanism in this paper.

Fig. 16. The results show that compared with the other three
strategies, LBlockchainE reduces the average data access delay
by 1.67%, 2.15% and 0.83%, respectively.
As the number of nodes increases, both LBlockchainE and
the optimal data storage strategy achieve higher data access
delay. The delay of LBlockchainE is slightly smaller than
that of the optimal data storage strategy in that the latter
only considers the link length without taking routing and
forwarding delay between nodes into account, which will
generate additional access delay. The random storage and best
storage strategies have an unstable increase in latency, but
both are higher than LBlockchainE. The random storage and
optimal storage strategies take a longer time to access data
between nodes and have an unstable delay. Fig. 18. The number of hash calculations required by PoW.
In addition, the hash calculation in this paper depends
on the size of the target value, which affects this difficulty.
Therefore, although a large number of hash calculations are higher than that of RSA. The key in this paper is divided into
reduced overall, the security of the entire environment can a public and a private key, and the account of each blockchain
be maintained, which relies on the verification of blocks and node is directly generated from the public key and released.
transactions. Miners will still maintain the balance of the The miner uses the private key to sign the block after it has
entire blockchain ecology for long-term benefits. As shown in been generated and signed. Other verifiers can use the public
Fig. 18, this experiment tested the number of hash calculations key issued by the miner to verify the signature in order to
required by PoW in the difficulty of 1 to 5. As the difficulty guarantee the legitimacy of the signer.
increases, the number of hash calculations increases almost It is necessary to avoid a majority attack due to the
exponentially. As presented in Fig. 17, when the contribution adoption of PoW. When the malicious nodes in the network
of data storage and the edge cloud coin owned by the node are combined and master more than 50% of the hash power,
increase, the target value increases, the easier it is for the it is possible that a malicious node will launch a fork attack
node to obtain the value within the range, and the number in the original blockchain that a fork is created to replace the
of hash calculations becomes less. The consensus mechanism previous chain relying on powerful computing power and the
in this paper can save more calculations and it can reach the transaction on the previous chain will be canceled. In another
target range with fewer rounds for the same block. When an case, the malicious node wants to modify the originally packed
indicator drops, such as the amount of stored data decreases, data and repack the tampered data to put it in the chain for
or the number of edge cloud coins owned decreases, it will malicious purposes. Once a transaction has been confirmed
increase the difficulty of obtaining blocks. by k blocks, it is usually set that it cannot be withdrawn. The
success probability of a fork attack exponentially decreases as
a function of k, and generally, k takes 6. The node can obtain
D. Security Analysis the right to pack the block only if the target value obtained
The SM2 encryption algorithm, which is an elliptic curve through PoW is within the range determined by the edge cloud
public key cryptographic algorithm with higher security than coin and the stored data. Even if a node has more computing
RSA-2048 and above and belongs to a completely exponen- resources, it is difficult to obtain block packing rights when it
tial encryption algorithm, is employed to generate the node contributes little to the overall storage of the edge cloud and
account in LBlockchainE. Since the computational complexity does not have sufficient edge cloud coins. In (5), Ci represents
is completely exponential, the difficulty of cracking is much the edge cloud coin owned by the node; Q i , the amount of

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2319

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2320 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023

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[38] C. Feng et al., “Efficient and secure data sharing for 5G flying Yu Jiang is currently working as a Researcher with
drones: A blockchain-enabled approach,” IEEE Netw., vol. 35, no. 1, the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Big Data Security
pp. 130–137, Jan. 2021. and Intelligent Processing, Nanjing, China. He used
[39] M. Dibaei et al., “Investigating the prospect of leveraging blockchain to work at the Institute of Big Data Research,
and machine learning to secure vehicular networks: A survey,” IEEE Yancheng. His research interests include blockchain-
Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 683–700, Feb. 2022. based IoT and edge computing. He has two patents
[40] X. Xu, W. Liang, J. Zhao, and H. Gao, “Tiny FCOS: A lightweight in the above field authorized by the State Intellectual
anchor-free object detection algorithm for mobile scenarios,” Mobile Property Office of China as one of the key inventors.
Netw. Appl., vol. 26, pp. 2219–2229, Oct. 2021. He has won a National Competition Award and
[41] X. Xu, J. Zhao, Y. Li, H. Gao, and X. Wang, “BANet: A balanced atrous several scholarships during university.
net improved from SSD for autonomous driving in smart transportation,”
IEEE Sensors J., vol. 21, no. 22, pp. 25018–25026, Nov. 2021.
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scalable user-centric route planning algorithm based on polychromatic
sets theory,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., early access, Jun. 7, 2021,
doi: 10.1109/TITS.2021.3085026.
[43] Y. Huang, H. Xu, H. Gao, X. Ma, and W. Hussain, “SSUR: An approach
to optimizing virtual machine allocation strategy based on user require-
ments for cloud data center,” IEEE Trans. Green Commun. Netw., vol. 5,
no. 2, pp. 670–681, Jun. 2021.
[44] X. Ma, H. Xu, H. Gao, and M. Bian, “Real-time multiple-workflow Xiaolong Xu received the B.E. degree in computer
scheduling in cloud environments,” IEEE Trans. Netw. Service Manage., and its applications in 1999, the M.E. degree in
vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 4002–4018, Dec. 2021. computer software and theories in 2002, and the
[45] H. Gao, C. Liu, Y. Yin, Y. Xu, and Y. Li, “A hybrid approach Ph.D. degree in communications and information
to trust node assessment and management for VANETs coopera- systems in 2008.
tive data communication: Historical interaction perspective,” IEEE He is currently a Professor with the School of
Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., early access, Nov. 30, 2021, doi: Computer Science, Nanjing University of Posts and
10.1109/TITS.2021.3129458. Telecommunications, Nanjing, China. He is also
working with the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Big
[46] J. Huang, L. Kong, G. Chen, M.-Y. Wu, X. Liu, and P. Zeng, “Towards Data Security and Intelligent Processing. He is a
secure industrial IoT: Blockchain system with credit-based consensus Senior Member of the China Computer Federation.
mechanism,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 3680–3689, He teaches graduate courses and conducts research in areas of cloud
Jun. 2019. computing, big data, information security, and novel network computing
[47] B. K. Mohanta, D. Jena, S. Ramasubbareddy, M. Daneshmand, and technologies. As the leader of project teams, he has successfully completed a
A. H. Gandomi, “Addressing security and privacy issues of IoT using number of high-level research projects, including the projects sponsored by the
blockchain technology,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 8, no. 2, National Science Fund of China. He has published more than 100 journals
pp. 881–888, Jan. 2021. and conference papers as the first or corresponding author and five books.
[48] H. Gao, Y. Zhang, H. Miao, R. J. D. Barroso, and X. Yang, “SDTIOA: He authorized 52 patents by the State Intellectual Property Office of China as
Modeling the timed privacy requirements of IoT service composition: the First Inventor. He was rated as an Excellent Young Professor of Jiangsu
A user interaction perspective for automatic transformation from BPEL Province in 2014, selected as the High-Level Creative Talents of Jiangsu
to timed automata,” Mobile Netw. Appl., vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 2272–2297, Province in 2015, and won the Title of Outstanding Expert in the area of
Dec. 2021. computer science and technology.

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JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2321

Honghao Gao (Senior Member, IEEE) is cur- Fu Xiao (Member, IEEE) is currently a Professor
rently with the School of Computer Engineering with the School of Computer Science, Nanjing Uni-
and Science, Shanghai University, China. He is versity of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing,
also a Professor with Gachon University, South China. His research papers have been published
Korea. Prior to that, he was a Research Fellow with in many prestigious conferences and journals, such
the Software Engineering Information Technology as IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE/ACM T RANSACTIONS
Institute, Central Michigan University, USA, and an ON N ETWORKING , IEEE J OURNAL ON S ELECTED
Adjunct Professor with Hangzhou Dianzi University, A REAS IN C OMMUNICATIONS, IEEE T RANSAC -
China. Moreover, he has broad working experience TIONS ON M OBILE C OMPUTING , ACM TECS, and
in cooperative industry-university-research. He has IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON V EHICULAR T ECHNOL -
publications in IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUS - OGY . His research interests are mainly in the areas
TRIAL I NFORMATICS , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NTELLIGENT T RANS - of the Internet of Things and mobile computing. He is a member of the IEEE
PORTATION S YSTEMS , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON N EURAL N ETWORKS Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery.
AND L EARNING S YSTEMS , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON S ERVICES C OMPUT-
ING , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON N ETWORK S CIENCE AND E NGINEERING,
IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON N ETWORK AND S ERVICE M ANAGEMENT, IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON C OGNITIVE C OMMUNICATIONS AND N ETWORKING,
IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON G REEN C OMMUNICATIONS AND N ETWORK -
ING , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON C OMPUTATIONAL S OCIAL S YSTEMS , IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON E MERGING T OPICS IN C OMPUTATIONAL I NTELLI -
GENCE, IEEE/ACM T RANSACTIONS ON C OMPUTATIONAL B IOLOGY AND
B IOINFORMATICS , IEEE I NTERNET OF T HINGS J OURNAL, IEEE J OURNAL
OF B IOMEDICAL AND H EALTH I NFORMATICS , IEEE N ETWORK , ACM
TOIT, ACM TOMM, ACM TOSN, ACM TMIS, and Information Sciences.
His research interests include software formal verification, the Industrial IoT
networks, vehicle communication, and intelligent medical image processing.
Prof. Gao is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
and the British Computer Society (BCS). He is a member of the EPSRC
Peer Review Associate College of U.K. Research and Innovation, U.K., and
a Founding Member of the IEEE Computer Society Smart Manufacturing Xinheng Wang (Senior Member, IEEE) received
Standards Committee. He was a recipient of the Best Paper Award at IEEE the B.E. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering
TII 2020 and EAI CollaborateCom 2020. He is the Editor-in-Chief for Interna- from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in
tional Journal of Intelligent Internet of Things Computing (IJIITC); an Editor 1991 and 1994, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
of Wireless Network and IET Wireless Sensor Systems; and an Associate Editor in electronics and computer engineering from Brunel
of IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NTELLIGENT T RANSPORTATION S YSTEMS , University, Uxbridge, U.K., in 2001.
IET Intelligent Transport Systems, IET Software, International Journal of He is currently a Professor with the School of
Communication Systems, Journal of Internet Technology, and Engineering Advanced Technology and the Head of the Depart-
Reports. He is an external expert for reviewing and monitoring EU Project at ment of Mechatronics and Robotics, Xi’an Jiaotong-
European Union Institutions. Liverpool University (XJTLU), Suzhou, China. Prior
to joining XJTLU, he was a Professor with different
Adel D. Rajab received the bachelor’s degree in universities in the U.K. He has been an Investigator or Co-Investigator of
computer science and information system and the nearly 30 research projects sponsored from EU, U.K. EPSRC, Innovate U.K.,
master’s and Ph.D. degrees in computer science and China NSFC, and industry. He has authored or coauthored over 170 referred
engineering from the University of South Carolina, papers. He holds 15 granted patents, including one U.S., one Japan, four South
USA. He is currently working as an Assistant Korea, and nine China patents. His current research interests include tactile
Professor with the College of Computer Science internet, indoor positioning, the Internet of Things (IoT), acoustic localization,
and Information System (CSIS) and the Vice Dean communications and sensing, and big data analytics for intelligent services,
of graduate studies for academic affairs at Najran where he has developed the world’s first smart trolley with an industry partner.
University, Najran, Saudi Arabia. His research inter- His research has led to a few commercial products in condition monitor-
ests are robotics, drones, machine learning, and ing, wireless mesh networks, and user-centric routing and navigation for
bioinformatic OBS networks. group users.

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