Blockchain and Fog Computing for Cyberphysical Systems: The Case of Smart Industry
This work addresses security and coordination issues in smart industry applications, but appears incremental as it combines existing technologies without novel breakthroughs.
The paper tackles the challenge of improving cyber-physical systems in complex environments by coupling blockchain with fog computing, aiming to enhance quality-of-service, data storage, computing, and security, but does not report specific numerical results.
Blockchain has revolutionized how transactions are conducted by ensuring secure and auditable peer-to-peer coordination. This is due to both the development of decentralization, and the promotion of trust among peers. Blockchain and fog computing are currently being evaluated as potential support for software and a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from banking practices and digital transactions to cyber-physical systems. These systems are designed to work in highly complex, sometimes even adversarial, environments, and to synchronize heterogeneous machines and manufacturing facilities in cyber computational space, and address critical challenges such as computational complexity, security, trust, and data management. Coupling blockchain with fog computing technologies has the potential to identify and overcome these issues. Thus, this paper presents the knowledge of blockchain and fog computing required to improve cyber-physical systems in terms of quality-of-service, data storage, computing and security.