Internet of Things (IoT): Opportunities, issues and challenges towards a smart and sustainable future

Recently, with the rapid development of information and communication technologies, the infrastructures, resources, end devices, and applications in communications and networking systems are becoming much more complex and heterogeneous. In addition, the large volume of data and massive end devices may bring serious security, privacy, services provisioning, and network management challenges. In order to achieve decentralized, secure, intelligent, and efficient network operation and management, the joint consideration of blockchain and machine learning (ML) may bring significant benefits and have attracted great interests from both academia and industry. On one hand, blockchain can significantly facilitate training data and ML model sharing, decentralized intelligence, security, privacy, and trusted decision-making of ML. On the other hand, ML will have significant impacts on the development of blockchain in communications and networking systems, including energy and resource efficiency, scalability, security, privacy, and intelligent smart contracts. However, some essential open issues and challenges that remain to be addressed before the widespread deployment of the integration of blockchain and ML, including resource management, data processing, scalable operation, and security issues. In this paper, we present a survey on the existing works for blockchain and ML technologies. We identify several important aspects of integrating blockchain and ML, including overview, benefits, and applications. Then we discuss some open issues, challenges, and broader perspectives that need to be addressed to jointly consider blockchain and ML for communications and networking systems.

Blockchain and Machine Learning for Communications and Networking Systems

A supply chain consists of many stakeholders such as suppliers, carriers and customers. It is often complex due to the rapid development of economic globalization and the intense competition pressure in the market which resulted in information sharing within a supply chain to be fragmented. Blockchain technology can solve this problem by having only a “one trusted ledger” that could reshape the element of data trust. The goal of this paper is to identify and understand the impact of blockchain technology for information sharing within a supply chain. The decentralized nature of blockchain technology offers a high level of transparency and has gained the attention from various sectors to deploy this technology. A systematic literature review in the academic literature was conducted using different databases. Blockchain-enabled information sharing can add value to enhance collaborative work in different types of supply chains such as health and medical, construction and smart city. From our findings, one potential impact of deploying blockchain-enabled information sharing within a supply chain is that it ensures all members in the chain can obtain verified information which enhances collaborative partnerships. Through this in-depth research, we highlighted potential barriers that could impede the development of blockchain technology in supply chain such as the lack of understanding of blockchain technology in businesses and conflict of interests. Future work such as information hiding, in parallel with information sharing, could close the gap in deploying this technology within a supply chain. Understanding the nature of different supply chain is also important to better prepare the deployment of blockchain. We acknowledge that our approach in selecting literatures in our systematic review may exclude certain literatures. Nonetheless, we tried to include as many relevant literatures as possible, to develop a roadmap on the current situation of blockchain-enabled information sharing within a supply chain.

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Blockchain-Enabled Information Sharing Within a Supply Chain: A Systematic Literature Review

A review of logistics Internet-of-Things: Current trends and scope for future research

Blockchain is a modern technology that has revolutionized the way society interacts and trades. It could be defined as a chain of blocks that stores information with digital signatures in a distributed and decentralized network. This technique was first adopted for the creation of digital cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, research and industrial studies have recently focused on the opportunities that blockchain provides in various other application domains to take advantage of the main features of this technology, such as: decentralization, persistency, anonymity, and auditability. This paper reviews the use of blockchain in several interesting fields, namely: finance, healthcare, information systems, wireless networks, Internet of Things, smart grids, governmental services, and military/defense. In addition, our paper identifies the challenges to overcome, to guarantee better use of this technology.

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Blockchain for Modern Applications: A Survey

Advancements in sensors and devices have enabled Internet of Things (IoT) adoption in various sectors, especially in domains looking to automate and increase their real-time decision making capabilities to improve efficiencies. Supply chain management in logistics is a perfect fit for adoption of IoT, since it involves shipment of assets being moved, tracked and housed by a number of machines, vehicles and people each day. Smart Contracts are terms and conditions parties can specify that assure trust in the enforceability of the contract and provide visibility at every step of a supply chain. IoT devices can write to a smart contract as a product moves from the factory floor to the store shelves, providing real-time visibility of an enterprises entire supply chain. This paper proposes a smart logistics solution encapsulating smart contracts, logistics planner and condition monitoring of the assets in the Supply Chain Management area. A prototype of the solution is implemented which demonstrates accountability, traceability and liability for asset handling across the supply chain by various parties involved in a logistics scenario.

Venkatesh Umashankar

Papers

IOT Enabled Smart Logistics Using Smart Contracts