LBlockchainE - A Lightweight Blockchain For Edge IoT-Enabled Maritime Transportation Systems PDF
LBlockchainE - A Lightweight Blockchain For Edge IoT-Enabled Maritime Transportation Systems PDF
LBlockchainE - A Lightweight Blockchain For Edge IoT-Enabled Maritime Transportation Systems PDF
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2308 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2311
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2312 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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 :
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2314 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2315
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2316 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023
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.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
JIANG et al.: LBlockchainE: LIGHTWEIGHT BLOCKCHAIN FOR EDGE IoT-ENABLED MTS 2319
data stored in the node; and t, the time elapsed between this [6] E. El Haber, T. M. Nguyen, and C. Assi, “Joint optimization of
block and the previous block. Due to the limitation, the value computational cost and devices energy for task offloading in multi-tier
edge-clouds,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 67, no. 5, pp. 3407–3421,
is relatively stable. E i depends on the change of Ci and Q i . May 2019.
When Ci and Q i are very small, it is still difficult for the [7] S. Nakamoto. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
node having a high computing power to get f i within the [Online]. Available: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
target value E i . [8] Z. Xu, S. Han, and L. Chen, “CUB, a consensus unit-based storage
scheme for blockchain system,” in Proc. IEEE 34th Int. Conf. Data
However, there is another special case in which edge cloud Eng. (ICDE), Paris, France, Apr. 2018, pp. 173–184.
coins can be obtained through continuous mining, thereby [9] A. Marsalek, T. Zefferer, E. Fasllija, and D. Ziegler, “Tackling data
accumulating a large amount of edge cloud coins, increasing inefficiency: Compressing the bitcoin blockchain,” in Proc. 18th IEEE
Int. Conf. Trust, Secur. Privacy Comput. Communications/13th IEEE Int.
the range of peripheral value to enhance the possibility of Conf. Big Data Sci. Eng. (TrustCom/BigDataSE), Rotorua, New Zealand,
obtaining block packaging rights. This problem is left to be Aug. 2019, pp. 626–633.
solved later. [10] A. Dorri, “LSB: A lightweight scalable blockchain for IoT security
and anonymity,” J. Parallel Distrib. Comput., vol. 134, pp. 180–197,
Dec. 2019.
VI. C ONCLUSION [11] Y. Xu, “Section-blockchain: A storage reduced blockchain protocol, the
foundation of an autotrophic decentralized storage architecture,” in Proc.
This paper proposes LBlockchainE for edge IoT-enabled 23rd Int. Conf. Eng. Complex Comput. Syst. (ICECCS), Melbourne, VIC,
MTS, a lightweight blockchain that fully considers the char- Australia, Dec. 2018, pp. 115–125.
[12] J. Pan, J. Wang, A. Hester, I. Alqerm, Y. Liu, and Y. Zhao, “EdgeChain:
acteristics of the edge IoT-enabled MTS and removes some An edge-IoT framework and prototype based on blockchain and smart
parts of the traditional blockchain that are not suitable for contracts,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 4719–4732,
the edge computing environment. In light of the edge server’s Jun. 2019.
and IoT devices’ limited resources on ship, a data placement [13] C. Li, J. Bai, Y. Chen, and Y. Luo, “Resource and replica management
strategy for optimizing financial cost and user experience in edge cloud
strategy is devised that not only reduces the storage cost of computing system,” Inf. Sci., vol. 516, pp. 33–55, Apr. 2020.
edge servers where sensor data is stored but also enables [14] M. B. M. Noor and W. H. Hassan, “Current research on Internet of
rapid resource access between edge servers. To reduce the Things (IoT) security: A survey,” Comput. Netw., vol. 148, pp. 283–294,
Jan. 2019.
storage occupation of the block, metadata items are introduced
[15] N. Neshenko, E. Bou-Harb, J. Crichigno, G. Kaddoum, and N. Ghani,
in this design, which only contains the basic information “Demystifying IoT security: An exhaustive survey on IoT vulnerabilities
and storage locations of the data items, which greatly saves and a first empirical look on internet-scale IoT exploitations,” IEEE
storage resources. LBlockchainE combines the competition Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 2702–2733, 3rd Quart., 2019.
[16] F. A. Alaba, M. Othman, I. A. T. Hashem, and F. Alotaibi, “Internet of
mechanism and Proof of Stake to determine the ownership Things security: A survey,” J. Netw. Comput. Appl., vol. 88, pp. 10–28,
of bookkeeping rights through a small number of competitive Jun. 2017.
calculations and the node’s resources, taking into account [17] M. A. Al-Garadi, A. Mohamed, A. K. Al-Ali, X. Du, I. Ali, and
M. Guizani, “A survey of machine and deep learning methods for
the limited resources in edge IoT-enabled MTS. This paper Internet of Things (IoT) security,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 22,
also uses the designed blockchain to ensure the reliability of no. 3, pp. 1646–1685, 3rd Quart., 2020.
the service composition, thereby verifying the effectiveness [18] S. Sicari, A. Rizzardi, L. A. Grieco, and A. Coen-Porisini, “Security,
of the blockchain in edge IoT-enabled MTS. In the future, privacy and trust in Internet of Things: The road ahead,” Comput. Netw.,
vol. 76, pp. 146–164, Jan. 2015.
the incentive mechanism of each node in the system will [19] B. Alzahrani and N. Fotiou, “Enhancing Internet of Things security
be studied to encourage each node to actively contribute using software-defined networking,” J. Syst. Archit., vol. 110, Nov. 2020,
its resources in order to ensure smooth operation of the Art. no. 101779.
blockchain platform for edge IoT-enabled MTS. [20] D. E. Kouicem, A. Bouabdallah, and H. Lakhlef, “Internet of Things
security: A top-down survey,” Comput. Netw., vol. 141, pp. 199–221,
Aug. 2018.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT [21] Ethereum. (2020). Ethereum Whitepaper. [Online]. Available:
https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/
The authors would like to thank editors and reviewers for [22] S. Q. Zeng, R. Huo, T. Huang, J. Liu, S. Wang, and W. Feng, “Survey
of blockchain: Principle, progress and application,” J. Commun., vol. 41,
their comments in helping them improve the quality of this no. 1, pp. 134–151, 2020.
paper. [23] Hyperledger. (2018). An Introduction to Hyperledger. [Online].
Available: https://www.hyperledger.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/07/
HL_Whitepaper_IntroductiontoHyperledger.pdf
R EFERENCES [24] S. Popov. (2016). The Tangle. [EB/OL]. [Online]. Available:
https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf
[1] Statista. (2021). Number of IoT Connected Devices Worldwide 2019–
2030. [Online]. Available: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183457/ [25] Y. Huang, J. Zhang, J. Duan, B. Xiao, F. Ye, and Y. Yang, “Resource
iot-connected-devices-worldwide/ allocation and consensus on edge blockchain in pervasive edge comput-
[2] M. Armbrust et al., “A view of cloud computing,” Commun. ACM, ing environments,” in Proc. IEEE 39th Int. Conf. Distrib. Comput. Syst.
vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 50–58, 2010. (ICDCS), Dallas, TX, USA, Jul. 2019, pp. 1476–1486.
[3] M. Du, Y. Wang, K. Ye, and C. Xu, “Algorithmics of cost-driven [26] A. Teixeira, I. Shames, H. Sandberg, and K. H. Johansson, “A secure
computation offloading in the edge-cloud environment,” IEEE Trans. control framework for resource-limited adversaries,” Automatica,
Comput., vol. 69, no. 10, pp. 1519–1532, Oct. 2020. vol. 51, pp. 135–148, Jan. 2015.
[4] K. Gai, J. Guo, L. Zhu, and S. Yu, “Blockchain meets cloud computing: [27] A. Reyna, C. Martín, J. Chen, E. Soler, and M. Díaz, “On blockchain and
A survey,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 2009–2030, its integration with IoT. Challenges and opportunities,” Future Gener.
3rd Quart., 2020. Comput. Syst., vol. 88, pp. 173–190, Nov. 2018.
[5] W. Shi, J. Cao, Q. Zhang, Y. Li, and L. Xu, “Edge computing: Vision [28] H.-N. Dai, M. Imran, and N. Haider, “Blockchain-enabled Internet of
and challenges,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 637–646, Medical Things to combat COVID-19,” IEEE Internet Things Mag.,
Oct. 2016. vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 52–57, Sep. 2020.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2320 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 24, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2023
[29] Z. Yang, K. Yang, L. Lei, K. Zheng, and V. C. M. Leung, “Blockchain- [49] B. B. Gupta, A. Gaurav, C.-H. Hsu, and B. Jiao, “Identity-based
based decentralized trust management in vehicular networks,” IEEE authentication mechanism for secure information sharing in the maritime
Internet Things J., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1495–1505, Apr. 2019. transport system,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., early access,
[30] K. Biswas and V. Muthukkumarasamy, “Securing smart cities using Nov. 15, 2021, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2021.3125402.
blockchain technology,” in Proc. IEEE 18th Int. Conf. High Perform. [50] J. Liu, C. Li, J. Bai, Y. Luo, H. Lv, and Z. Lv, “Security
Comput. Communications, IEEE 14th Int. Conf. Smart City, IEEE in IoT-enabled digital twins of maritime transportation systems,”
2nd Int. Conf. Data Sci. Syst. (HPCC/SmartCity/DSS), Sydney, NSW, IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., early access, Nov. 24, 2021, doi:
Australia, Dec. 2016, pp. 1392–1393. 10.1109/TITS.2021.3122566.
[31] A. Dorri, S. S. Kanhere, R. Jurdak, and P. Gauravaram, “Blockchain for [51] M. Shen et al., “Blockchain-assisted secure device authentication for
IoT security and privacy: The case study of a smart home,” in Proc. IEEE cross-domain industrial IoT,” IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 38, no. 5,
Int. Conf. Pervasive Comput. Commun. Workshops (PerCom Workshops), pp. 942–954, May 2020.
Kona, HI, USA, Mar. 2017, pp. 618–623. [52] M. Shen, X. Tang, L. Zhu, X. Du, and M. Guizani, “Privacy-
[32] X. Song, Y. Huang, Q. Zhou, F. Ye, Y. Yang, and X. Li, “Content centric preserving support vector machine training over blockchain-based
peer data sharing in pervasive edge computing environments,” in Proc. encrypted IoT data in smart cities,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 6,
IEEE 37th Int. Conf. Distrib. Comput. Syst. (ICDCS), Atlanta, GA, USA, no. 5, pp. 7702–7712, Oct. 2019.
Jun. 2017, pp. 287–297. [53] M. Shen, J. Zhang, L. Zhu, K. Xu, and X. Tang, “Secure SVM
[33] I. Fister, I. Fister, Jr., X.-S. Yang, and J. Brest, “A comprehensive training over vertically-partitioned datasets using consortium blockchain
review of firefly algorithms,” Swarm Evol. Comput., vol. 13, pp. 34–46, for vehicular social networks,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 69, no. 6,
Dec. 2013. pp. 5773–5783, Jun. 2020.
[34] H. Liao, Y. Mu, Z. Zhou, M. Sun, Z. Wang, and C. Pan, “Blockchain [54] H. Gao, C. Liu, Y. Li, and X. Yang, “V2 VR: Reliable hybrid-network-
and learning-based secure and intelligent task offloading for vehicular oriented V2 V data transmission and routing considering RSUs and
fog computing,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 22, no. 7, connectivity probability,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 22, no. 6,
pp. 4051–4063, Jul. 2021. pp. 3533–3546, Jun. 2021.
[35] A. Munusamy et al., “Edge-centric secure service provisioning in IoT-
enabled maritime transportation systems,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp.
Syst., early access, Aug. 12, 2021, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2021.3102957.
[36] J. O. Eichenhofer, E. Heymann, B. P. Miller, and A. Kang, “An in-depth
security assessment of maritime container terminal software systems,”
IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 128050–128067, 2020.
[37] J. Li, J. Wu, J. Li, A. K. Bashir, M. J. Piran, and A. Anjum, “Blockchain-
based trust edge knowledge inference of multi-robot systems for collabo-
rative tasks,” IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 59, no. 7, pp. 94–100, Jul. 2021.
[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.
[42] P. Li, X. Wang, H. Gao, X. Xu, M. Iqbal, and K. Dahal, “A dynamic and
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.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Université Hassan II Casablanca. Downloaded on April 29,2023 at 06:53:09 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.