Blockchain-Enabled Secure Communication Framework For IoT Networks

Due to the rapid expansion in the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), new challenges have emerged in relation to IoT security such as device verification, data integrity and fault toler-ance among others. This paper outlines a framework that provides secure communication in IoT using blockchain technology through a three layer design comprising of IoT devices, Blockchain consensus nodes and communication mechanisms. This proposed blockchain framework has a hybrid consensus scheme that combines the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus mechanism with Proof-of-Authority (PoA). This scheme achieves a throughput improvement of 98.3% when compared to Ethereum based schemes with 95.3% lower latency. Evaluations conducted show transaction processing speeds of 1,080 transactions per second with a finality of 3.5 seconds supporting up to 400 devices concurrently. It is also able to support resilient operations with 33% Byzantine nodes and zero false positive rate for device authentication.