Consensus in IOT Devices: A Blockchain Based Supply Chain Case Study

Abstract

The hybrid of the blockchain and IoT solves numerous problems of centralized IoT devices network and provides an environment based on decentralization, heavy fault tolerance, improved security, and transparency for the data of the IoT devices. The blockchain needs the consensus between the network nodes to agree on the single state of the ledger data. However, the extensive computational requirements for the consensus algorithms in blockchain are not in any way suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices with limited computational and communications capabilities. To address this issue, this study designs an improved version of the Raft consensus mRAFT for use in IoT devices networks based on the permissioned blockchain Hyperledger Fabric. Every blockchain transaction in Raft consensus is directed to the leader node, that transmits it to the follower nodes, making the leader node the bottleneck point and inhibiting the scalability, throughput, and high latency of the overall IoT devices network. The proposed consensus algorithm mRAFT is based on the idea of utilizing the idle follower nodes in disseminating the vote requests and log replication messages. Comprehensive experimental evaluation of the solution over Hyperedge Fabric network is done using Hype ledger Caliper to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. The balanced workload division on the peers improves the throughput and latency of the consensus in ordering service that ultimately increases the efficiency of the whole system