AI-empowered, blockchain and SDN integrated security architecture for IoT network of cyber physical systems

• Published in: Computer communications Vol. 181; pp. 274 - 283
• Main Authors: Latif, Sohaib A., Wen, Fang B. Xian, Iwendi, Celestine, Wang, Li-li F., Mohsin, Syed Muhammad, Han, Zhaoyang, Band, Shahab S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Blockchain; Cyber physical systems; Energy efficiency; Industry 4.0; Internet of things; SDN; Security; Internet of things; Cyber physical systems; Blockchain; Energy efficiency; Industry 4.0; SDN; Security
• ISSN: 0140-3664; 1873-703X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.comcom.2021.09.029

Internet of things (IoT) is one of the most emerging technologies nowadays and it is one of the key enablers of industrial cyber physical system (CPSs). It has started to participate in almost every aspect of our social life, ranging from financial transactions to the healthcare system, communication to national security, battlefield to smart homes, and so on. However, the wide deployment of IoT suffers certain issues as well, such as interoperability, compatibility, heterogeneity, large amount of data, processing of heterogeneous data etc. Among others, energy efficiency and security are the utmost prominent issues. Scarce computing resources of IoT devices put hindrances on information sharing across edge or IoT network. Indeed, unintentional or malicious interference with IoT data may lead to severe concerns. In this study, the researcher exploits the potential benefits of a blockchain system and integrates it with software-defined networking (SDN) while justifying energy and security issues. More in detail, the researcher proposed a new routing protocol with the cluster structure for IoT networks using blockchain-based architecture for SDN controller. The proposed architecture obviates proof-of-work (PoW) with private and public blockchains for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication between SDN controllers and IoT devices. In addition to this, distributed trust-based authentication mechanism makes blockchain even more adoptive for IoT devices with limited resources. The experimental results show that the proposed cluster structure based routing protocol outperforms the state-of-the-art Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Secure Mobile Sensor Network (SMSN), Energy efficient secured cluster based distributed fault diagnosis (EESCFD), and Ad-hoc On-demand Multipath Distance Vector (AOMDV), in terms of energy consumption, network throughput, and packet latency. Proposed protocol help overcome the issues especially, energy management and security of the next generation industrial cyber physical systems.