Global air transport carries about 4.3 billion pieces of baggage each year, and up to 56 percent of travellers prefer obtaining real-time baggage tracking information throughout their trip. However, the traditional baggage tracking scheme is generally based on optical scanning and centralized storage systems, which suffers from low efficiency and information leakage. In this paper, a blockchain and edge computing-based Internet of Things (IoT) system for tracking of airport baggage (BEI-TAB) is proposed. Through the combination of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) and blockchain, real-time baggage processing information is automatically stored in blockchain. In addition, we deploy Interplanetary File System (IPFS) at edge nodes with ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) to store basic baggage information. Only hash values returned by the IPFS network are kept in blockchain, enhancing the scalability of the system. Furthermore, a multichannel scheme is designed to realize the physical isolation of data and to rapidly process multiple types of data and business requirements in parallel. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first architecture that integrates RFID, IPFS, and CP-ABE with blockchain technologies to facilitate secure, decentralized, and real-time characteristics for storing and sharing data for baggage tracking. We have deployed a testbed with both software and hardware to evaluate the proposed system, considering the performances of transaction processing time and speed. In addition, based on the characteristics of consortium blockchain, we improved the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) consensus protocol, which introduced the node credit score mechanism and cooperated with the simplified consistency protocol. Experimental results show that the credit score-based PBFT consensus (CSPBFT) can shorten transaction delay and improve the long-term running efficiency of the system.

中文翻译：

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BEI-TAB：使用混合区块链边缘系统实现安全和分布式的机场行李追踪

全球航空运输每年运送约 43 亿件行李，多达 56% 的旅客更喜欢在整个旅程中获取实时行李跟踪信息。然而，传统的行李追踪方案一般基于光学扫描和集中存储系统，效率低下，信息泄露。在本文中，提出了一种基于区块链和边缘计算的物联网（IoT）系统，用于跟踪机场行李（BEI-TAB）。通过射频识别技术（RFID）和区块链的结合，实时行李处理信息自动存储在区块链中。此外，我们在边缘节点部署星际文件系统（IPFS），采用基于密文策略属性的加密（CP-ABE）来存储基本行李信息。只有 IPFS 网络返回的哈希值才会保​​存在区块链中，从而增强了系统的可扩展性。此外，还设计了多通道方案，实现数据物理隔离，快速并行处理多种类型的数据和业务需求。据我们所知，它是第一个将 RFID、IPFS 和 CP-ABE 与区块链技术相集成的架构，以促进安全、分散和实时特性，用于存储和共享行李跟踪数据。考虑到事务处理时间和速度的性能，我们已经部署了一个带有软件和硬件的测试平台来评估所提出的系统。此外，基于联盟链的特点，我们改进了实用的拜占庭容错（PBFT）共识协议，引入了节点信用评分机制，配合简化的一致性协议。实验结果表明，基于信用评分的PBFT共识（CSPBFT）可以缩短交易延迟，提高系统的长期运行效率。