[Paper Review] Designing a blockchain-based IoT infrastructure with Ethereum, Swarm and LoRa

Kazım Rıfat Özyılmaz, Arda Yurdakul|arXiv (Cornell University)|Sep 20, 2018

IoT and Edge/Fog Computing12 references52 citations

TL;DR

The paper proposes a standardized, blockchain-based IoT backend that stores data in Swarm and coordinates access via Ethereum smart contracts, demonstrated with a LoRa gateway-based proof-of-concept.

ABSTRACT

Today, the number of IoT devices in all aspects of life is exponentially increasing. The cities we are living in are getting smarter and informing us about our surroundings in a contextual manner. However, there lay significant challenges of deploying, managing and collecting data from these devices, in addition to the problem of storing and mining that data for higher-quality IoT services. Blockchain technology, even in today's nascent form, contains the pillars to create a common, distributed, trustless and autonomous infrastructure system. This paper describes a standardized IoT infrastructure; where data is stored on a DDOS-resistant, fault-tolerant, distributed storage service and data access is managed by a decentralized, trustless blockchain. The illustrated system used LoRa as the emerging network technology, Swarm as the distributed data storage and Ethereum as the blockchain platform. Such a data backend will ensure high availability with minimal security risks while replacing traditional backend systems with a single "smart contract".

Motivation & Objective

• Standardize IoT device discovery, communication, and data submission to a blockchain-backed backend.
• Create a peer-to-peer, fault-tolerant, DDOS-resistant infrastructure for IoT data storage and access.
• Facilitate querying and data retrieval from IoT devices via smart contracts and a unified interface.
• Demonstrate integration of LoRa gateways with Swarm storage and Ethereum smart contracts as a proof-of-concept.

Proposed method

• Describe a gateway-centric IoT architecture where data is stored in Swarm and references (hashes) are stored on Ethereum via smart contracts.
• Integrate LoRa gateways with Ethereum and Swarm to enable data push, storage, and retrieval through a unified protocol.
• Propose IoT gateway integration strategies (gateway as full node, gateway as thin client, end devices as various blockchain clients).
• Present a sample smart contract data structure that maps device data to Swarm file hashes and emits events on data submission.
• Use a PoC with LoRaWAN hardware to demonstrate end-to-end data flow from sensor to Swarm storage and Ethereum-backed access.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can IoT gateways and end devices be integrated into a blockchain-based backend using Ethereum and Swarm?
• RQ2 What data model and smart contract structure enable efficient association of IoT data with Swarm storage handles?
• RQ3 What are the resource, throughput, and architectural implications of deploying a blockchain-backed IoT backend with LoRa gateways?
• RQ4 Can a PoC demonstrate end-to-end data push from LoRa end devices to Swarm and accessible via Ethereum smart contracts?

Key findings

• A blockchain-backed IoT backend can provide DDOS-resistant storage via Swarm and trustless data access via Ethereum Smart Contracts.
• LoRa-based PoC shows data flow from end devices through gateway to Swarm storage and Ethereum, with a smart contract linking device data to Swarm hashes.
• Different gateway and device integration modes (full node, thin client, server-trusting client, thin vs full node) offer trade-offs in ease of integration and trust assumptions.
• Throughput in private Ethereum networks can reach around 16 transactions per second; public Ethereum was around 10.6 transactions per second at the time of writing.
• Gateways with Swarm increase memory usage (1.2–1.5 GB for mining full nodes in private network; up to 4 GB in public network) but enable scalable IoT data handling.
• The paper discusses potential improvements such as switching to PoS, encryption and access control challenges, bandwidth considerations, and real-time data requirements for IoT blockchain systems.