Blockchain for 5G-enabled IoT for industrial automation: A systematic review, solutions, and challenges

Water management is paramount in countries with water scarcity. This also affects agriculture, as a large amount of water is dedicated to that use. The possible consequences of global warming lead to the consideration of creating water adaptation measures to ensure the availability of water for food production and consumption. Thus, studies aimed at saving water usage in the irrigation process have increased over the years. Typical commercial sensors for agriculture irrigation systems are very expensive, making it impossible for smaller farmers to implement this type of system. However, manufacturers are currently offering low-cost sensors that can be connected to nodes to implement affordable systems for irrigation management and agriculture monitoring. Due to the recent advances in IoT and WSN technologies that can be applied in the development of these systems, we present a survey aimed at summarizing the current state of the art regarding smart irrigation systems. We determine the parameters that are monitored in irrigation systems regarding water quantity and quality, soil characteristics and weather conditions. We provide an overview of the most utilized nodes and wireless technologies. Lastly, we will discuss the challenges and the best practices for the implementation of sensor-based irrigation systems.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/4/1042/pdf

IoT-Based Smart Irrigation Systems: An Overview on the Recent Trends on Sensors and IoT Systems for Irrigation in Precision Agriculture

The electric vehicle (EV) charging scheme can reduce the power generation costs and improve the smart grid resilience. However, the huge penetrations of EVs can impact the voltage stability and operating costs. In this paper, a novel EV participation charging scheme is proposed for a decentralized blockchain-enabled smart grid system. Our objectives are to minimize the power fluctuation level in the grid network and the overall charging cost for EV users. We first formulate the power fluctuation level problem of the smart grid system that take into accounts of EV battery capacities, charging rates, and EV users charging behavior. And then, we propose a novel adaptive blockchain-based electric vehicle participation (AdBEV) scheme that uses the Iceberg order execution algorithm to obtain an improved EV charging and discharging schedule. The simulation results show the proposed scheme outperforms the scheme that applying genetic algorithm approach in term of lowering the power fluctuation level and overall charging costs.

Adaptive Blockchain-Based Electric Vehicle Participation Scheme in Smart Grid Platform

Blockchain is an immutable type of distributed ledger that is capable of storing data without relying on a third party. Blockchain technology has attracted significant interest in research areas, including its application in the smart grid for cybersecurity. Although significant efforts have been devoted to utilizing blockchain in the smart grid for cybersecurity, there is a lack of comprehensive survey on blockchain in the smart grid for cybersecurity in both application and technological perspectives. To fill this gap, we conducted a comprehensive survey on blockchain for smart gird cybersecurity. This conducted survey presents the latest insights of ideas, architectures, and techniques of implementation that are relevant to blockchain's application in the smart grid for cybersecurity. This article aims at providing helpful guidance and reference for future research efforts specific to blockchain for cybersecurity in the smart grid.

Blockchain for Cybersecurity in Smart Grid: A Comprehensive Survey

In this paper, we analyze the Ethereum blockchain using the complex networks modeling framework. Accounts acting on the blockchain are represented as nodes, while the interactions among these accounts, recorded on the blockchain, are treated as links in the network. Using this representation, it is possible to derive interesting mathematical characteristics that improve the understanding of the actual interactions happening in the blockchain. Not only, by looking at the history of the blockchain, it is possible to verify if radical changes in the blockchain evolution happened.

On the Ethereum Blockchain Structure: a Complex Networks Theory Perspective

Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) plays a vital role in various domains, which are home, agricultural, healthcare, tourism, transportation and education. The more of its development, the more we need to consider about its security and privacy issues. In this paper, we consider smart home system (SHS) as a case study. SHS is an integration of home appliances together with sensors to get automatic operations of heating, lighting, air conditioning, home security, health care systems, etc. Moreover, SHS allows homeowner to monitor and perform appliances functions remotely at any instant time via the Internet. Due to the widespread availability and proliferation of the SHS, attackers can impersonate as a homeowner to steal important data (e.g., vital signs) for doing extortion and life threatening. Therefore, in this paper, we present an approach of private Blockchain implementation for SHS to cope of its privacy and security issues. We review Ethereum Blockchain packages for SHS according to its smart contract features for handling access control policy, data storage and data flow management.

Review of Ethereum: Smart home case study

Due to emerging disruptive technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) play a vital role for smart living domains, for examples, elderly and disabilities healthcare services and home safety and security monitoring and automation control services. These systems will send automatically an emergency call with home user information and location as a privacy data to public services like hospitals, police offices, or fire departments. This paper introduces emergency service for a Smart Home System (SHS) based on Ethereum blockchain with smart contract for decentralized handling access control among untrusted public services so called Home Service Providers (HSPs) and smart home IoT devices. Our SHS testbed consists of (1) smart home sensor manger equipped with Raspberry Pi (RPi) represented as an edge IoT gateway for gathering environmental sensor data, (2) HSP miners deployed Meteor and Ethereum platform, and (3) web-based applications for home users and HSP staffs. Furthermore, our contribution includes the integration of digital signature for the IoT device authentication, the One Time Passcode with QR code for HSP staff access control, and IPFS for manipulating emergency call from SHS in peers. Our implementation results focusing on HSP miners will be presented and analysed.

Emergency Service for Smart Home System Using Ethereum Blockchain: System and Architecture

Home intrusion plays a role and requires a system to notify and activate homeowners to be alert and protect their home assets in time. HIVE is proposed for home intrusion detection and devised in three parts. First, sensor manager is composed of sensor manager acting as ZigBee coordinator communicating with ZigBee sensors and actuators. Three different sensor types are passive infrared for detecting motion, magnetic switch for opening/closing of door detection, and load cell for the weight gauge from pressing steps on the floor. Two actuators, composing of piezo alarm and LED, are activated by sensor manager. Second, Firebase is developed as cloud database and user authentication service. Third, an android application is deployed for end-user for monitoring, configuring, and being notified remotely. As a result, sensor and actuator modules can join the ZigBee network automatically. Sensor Manager sends updated sensors' and actuators' data to Firebase, consequently, home users can be notified intrusion events via the android application, and remotely configure events, sensors, and actuators anywhere anytime via the Internet. Therefore, this system can enhance security and safety for home assets.

HIVE: Home Automation System for Intrusion Detection

Emergency service call for public service providers has become an important role for smart home applications in order to support safety and security in the household building. Blockchain has been a promising solution with cryptography and incentive distributed mechanisms to support the verification, execution and recording of transactions between untrusted parties. In this paper, we present a Smart Home System (SHS) based on Ethereum with smart contract infrastructure for handling an emergency service sending from SHS to Home Service Providers (HSP) when there are unusual environmental conditions. Our SHS testbed consists of three domains: (1) Smart Home Sensor Manager (SM) or IoT devices to gather environmental sensor data and send an emergency call to HSP, (2) Home Service Provider (HSP) system deployed with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and smart contract, and (3) decentralize Meteor framework to interface between Ethereum and web based applications for homeowners (HO) and HSP staffs. To achieve homeowner privacy and security, we enable digital signature coupling with InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for handling the emergency call from SM to HSP and One Time Passcode (OTP) produced by HSP for HSP staffs to verify themselves for further access control when they go to service homeowner’s house. Each smart contract transaction in solidity is described. Finally, security and privacy issues for our proposed work are discussed.

Ethereum-based Emergency Service for Smart Home System: Smart Contract Implementation

Monitoring power consumption of electrical appliances is a step towards energy efficiency and saving management. This paper proposes an Arduino multichannel power meter design with the aim at improving real power accuracy by sampling voltage and current simultaneously. Moreover, it adds the ability for users to choose current sensors for suitable use regarding to appliances. As a consequence, calibration factors must be changed according to a selected sensor. This design, instead of editing the source code by the users, provides configuration files and APIs for remote configuration. This paper presents the hardware design and high-level algorithm for the Arduino firmware. Experiments on multiple workloads with an external reliable power meter are setup for parameter calibrations and the meter design accuracy evaluation.

Thitinan Tantidham

Papers

Review of Ethereum: Smart home case study

Emergency Service for Smart Home System Using Ethereum Blockchain: System and Architecture

HIVE: Home Automation System for Intrusion Detection

Ethereum-based Emergency Service for Smart Home System: Smart Contract Implementation

AC power meter design based on Arduino: Multichannel single-phase approach