The proliferation of IoT in various technological realms has resulted in the massive spurt of unsecured data. The use of complex security mechanisms for securing these data is highly restricted owing to the low-power and low-resource nature of most of the IoT devices, especially at the Edge. In this article, we propose to use blockchains for extending security to such IoT implementations. We deploy a Ethereum blockchain consisting of both regular and constrained devices connecting to the blockchain through wired and wireless heterogeneous networks. We additionally implement a secure and encrypted networked clock mechanism to synchronize the non-real-time IoT Edge nodes within the blockchain. Further, we experimentally study the feasibility of such a deployment and the bottlenecks associated with it by running necessary cryptographic operations for blockchains in IoT devices. We study the effects of network latency, increase in constrained blockchain nodes, data size, Ether, and blockchain node mobility during transaction and mining of data within our deployed blockchain. This study serves as a guideline for designing secured solutions for IoT implementations under various operating conditions such as those encountered for static IoT nodes and mobile IoT devices.

中文翻译：

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边缘区块链：资源受限的物联网网络的性能


物联网在各个技术领域的激增导致不安全数据的大量涌现。由于大多数物联网设备（尤其是边缘设备）的低功耗和低资源特性，使用复杂的安全机制来保护这些数据受到严格限制。在本文中，我们建议使用区块链将安全性扩展到此类物联网实施。我们部署了一个以太坊区块链，由通过有线和无线异构网络连接到区块链的常规设备和受限设备组成。我们还实施了安全且加密的网络时钟机制来同步区块链内的非实时 IoT Edge 节点。此外，我们通过在物联网设备中运行必要的区块链加密操作来实验研究这种部署的可行性以及与之相关的瓶颈。我们研究了在我们部署的区块链内进行数据交易和挖掘期间网络延迟、受限区块链节点的增加、数据大小、以太币和区块链节点移动性的影响。这项研究可作为在各种操作条件下（例如静态物联网节点和移动物联网设备遇到的情况）设计物联网实施安全解决方案的指南。