Secure Implementation and Evaluation of IoT Networks using PKC and Hash-Based Blockchain Framework

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is growing in its scope of sensors, industrial automation, transport, healthcare, agriculture and smart-city services, with edge devices having limited memory, computation, energy and communications. While blockchain can offer an audit trail and the source of device transactions and data provenance, traditional designs often have communication, storage, cryptographic and consensus costs that are not suitable for the constrained nodes. This article develps a simulation-based implementation methodology of a light weight public-key-cryptography and SHA-256 hash based blockchain system that is suitable for Class 1 and Class 2 IoT environment. The architecture proposed delegates sensing and transaction signing tasks to thin clients, places ledger maintenance and PBFT consensus at the gateway or validator nodes and separates large sensor payloads from the ledger, only recording their SHA-256 commitment in the ledger. The implemented architecture is evaluated with three well recognized public key cryptography scheme Ed25519, ECDSA P-256 and RSA-2048 . The implementation methodology is a mix of ns-3 for packet level network simulation and Contiki-NG / Cooja for the constrained operating-system behavior, while the independent cross-check is specified as OMNeT++ / INET for selected scenarios. Each scenario projection for latency, energy, throughput, storage and IDS behavior is created using a separate parameterized virtual-simulation model. The values are intended to be model generated and not real measurements using CC2538, ESP32 or Raspberry Pi hardware. The resulting framework offers a repeatable route from conceptual architecture to simulator implementation and identifies the measurements that need to be taken on the upcoming hardware validation.