ChainSplitter: Towards Blockchain-Based Industrial IoT Architecture for Supporting Hierarchical Storage

Abstract

The fast developing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies provide a promising opportunity to build large-scale systems to connect numerous heterogeneous devices into the Internet. Most existing IIoT infrastructures are based on a centralized architecture, which is easier for management but cannot effectively support immutable and verifiable services among multiple parties. Blockchain technology provides many desired features for large-scale IIoT infrastructures, such as decentralization, trustworthiness, trackability, and immutability. This paper presents a blockchain-based IIoT architecture to support immutable and verifiable services. However, when applying blockchain technology to the IIoT infrastructure, the required storage space posts a grant challenge to resource-constrained IIoT infrastructures. To address the storage issue, this paper proposes a hierarchical blockchain storage structure, ChainSplitter. Specially, the proposed architecture features a hierarchical storage structure where the majority of the blockchain is stored in the clouds, while the most recent blocks are stored in the overlay network of the individual IIoT networks. The proposed architecture seamlessly binds local IIoT networks, the blockchain overlay network, and the cloud infrastructure together through two connectors, the blockchain connector and the cloud connector, to construct the hierarchical blockchain storage. The blockchain connector in the overlay network builds blocks in blockchain from data generated in IIoT networks, and the cloud connector resolves the blockchain synchronization issues between the overlay network and the clouds. We also provide a case study to show the efficiency of the proposed hierarchical blockchain storage in a practical Industrial IoT case.

A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of IoT Infrastructure

“…Specifically, they find solutions on where to place the mini-data centers to minimize the latency, ranging from IoT data collection to data migration. ChainSplitter [15] is a hierarchical blockchain storage strategy in industrial IoT (IIoT) to eliminate blockchain storage issues, where all nodes must store all of the data locally. Using ChainSplitter, most of the blocks are stored in the clouds, whereas most recent blocks are stored in the overlay networks in the IIoT network.…”

“…[14] A software-defined storage and mini-data centers architecture. [15] Hierarchical blockchain storage strategy in industrial IoT. [16] Blockchain and homomorphic encryption for data sharing.…”

Lightweight End-to-End Blockchain for IoT Applications

“…Wang et. al [6] provides a blockchain-based industrial IoT architecture to support immutable and verifiable services. Its proposed architecture seamlessly binds local IoT networks, the blockchain overlay network, and the cloud infrastructure together.…”

An evaluation framework for privacy‐preserving solutions applicable for blockchain‐based internet‐of‐things platforms

“…IoT systems are characterized by multi‐party ecosystems, with data exchange among different devices and parties 1 . The tamper‐proof, immutability, and transparency features of blockchain make members able to trace all transactions (past and present), which provides a reliable way to identify data leakages or manipulation 2‐4 . The integrity of huge amounts of IoT sensory data can be assured in a blockchain‐based distributed cloud from sensor to service with no need to rely on trusted third parties 5 .…”