A lightweight IoT framework using group blockchain for enhanced scalability

초록

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been widely deployed in real-world applications, providing significant convenience to human life. However, due to their constant network connectivity, IoT devices are highly exposed to security vulnerabilities. Blockchain (BC) technology has been explored as a potential solution for securing IoT data, but its scalability remains a major limitation due to the inherent characteristics of distributed computing. As the number of IoT nodes increases, BC systems face greater computational complexity and network traffic, resulting in performance overheads that are unsuitable for resource-constrained IoT devices. Furthermore, ensuring secure communication requires robust security mechanisms tailored to the IoT environment. To address these challenges, we propose a novel IoT framework that offers lightweight security and improved scalability for BC-based systems. The proposed framework consists of a data blockchain (dBC) and a meta blockchain (mBC). In the dBC, IoT devices are grouped into smaller clusters using two algorithms: one based on network delay and another based on secure randomness, supporting BC scalability. To further enhance security in constrained environments, we introduce an Enhanced Privacy Piggy Bank (EPPB) protocol, which utilizes bilinear pairings of cryptographic keys to enable mutual authentication between communicating IoT devices. To validate the proposed framework, performance evaluations were conducted using M/M/1 and parallel M/M/1 queuing models under various scenarios, including transaction delay, energy consumption, and faulty operating conditions. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework effectively reduces transaction delay and energy consumption while maintaining scalability, even as the number of IoT nodes increases.

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