Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast growing area. Most of the modern devices in our homes and working environment do have connectivity capability to the internet as well among themselves, hence becoming “smart” in the process (Sfar et al. 2018).

Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent paradigm which gives to people high tech life style and it has altered the traditional way of living. There are various transmission due to IoT that are smart city, smart homes, energy saving, pollution control, smart industries, smart transportation, etc. (Kumar et al. 2019). The IoT is allowing the messaging between sensors and electronic devices using the internet for making easier our lives. Using internet and smart devices, IoT provide different solutions to numerous issues and challenges which are relevant to different public/private, business, and governmental industries across the globe (Sfar et al. 2017). The importance of it is increases ability of sense the environment. IoT is a new concept that combines various frameworks, smart systems, intelligent devices and sensors.

Demands of users are increasing for innovative applications for managing, monitoring and robotic (Bennett et al. 2018). IoT applications also use cloud computing to achieve exact composite services using the composition of existing atomic services which is service-based applications in IoT (Ghobaei-Arani and Souri 2018). Advantage of IoT applications is user can choose the best opportunity any how they decide, monitor or manage environmental cloud resources (Sathiyanathan et al. 2020).

The IoT is increasing year after year and its goal is development in 5G technologies. Nevertheless, on the other hand, due to increased internet connection, it attracts the possible attacks from multiple dimensions so security and privacy are challenging for IoT (Sathiyanathan et al. 2020; Rivera and Meulen 2016). The structure of IoT devices is decentralized, so it is difficult to use the ordinary current security technique which is used in the communication among IoT nodes. The Blockchain (BC) technology is used to deliver security in communications among the IoT devices and also it provides a distribute, decentralize and publicly present shared register which is used to store the data of the blocks and it treated and proved in an IoT network (Roman et al. 2013). The BC technology had an immerse impact on the digital currency space starting from Bit coin, crypto currency platform. The BC is a spread ledger capable of ongoing a transactions immutable log occurring in a system. Nowadays (Alhayani and Abdallah 2020; Alhayani and llha 2021; Alhayani et al. 2021; Al-Hayani and Ilhan 2020), BC has engrossed substantial interest in research regions outside the financial sector such as IoT using its characteristics of decentralization, security, and auditability though, despite the attempts there seems to be a lacking relation towards constructing a actually reorganized (Kwekha-Rashid et al. 2021; Hasan and Alhayani 2021; Yahya et al. 2021), unworthy and protected environment for the IoT (Sathiyanathan et al. 2020; Dorri et al. 2016). The IoT devices arrayed with their existing username password combination for the authentication purpose (Abu-Rumman 2021; Abu-Rumman et al. 2021). Therefore, it becomes vulnerable to attack and can be controlled. By use of the Peer-to-peer topology, the data were stored in the public ledger and managed automatically (Kwekha-Rashid et al. 2021; Hasan and Alhayani 2021). In BC technology, transactions are in the block form among IoT nodes. These blocks are related to each other and each device characterized by earlier device address (Ana et al. 2018).

The block chain and IoT works together in the structure of IoT and Cloud integration. Each emerging technology not only comes with opportunities (Al-Shawabkeh et al. 2020; Rashid et al. 2021), but also has many challenges. There are lots of opportunities for the BC-IoT integration approach (Sfar et al. 2018; Dorri et al. 2016; Ana et al. 2018). Some of the opportunities are building the trust between parties, security and privacy, reduce the cost and time, social services, risk management and financial services. There are many challenges for the IoT and BC, such as store, scale, discover, and skills (Alamri et al. 2019).

The paper aimed to study integration of IoT and block chain in detail. Rest of paper is organized as follows: the next section provides the literature review. The third section defines an architecture for using key-based authentication for IoT devices with the support of block chain. Comparison of different algorithms using block chain along with challenges (Yahya et al. 2021; Xing et al. 2020), opportunities and applications are carried out. Critical comments, suggestions and conclusion are given in the fourth section. References are summarized in the last section.

Literature review

Nakamoto in 2008 introduced Blockchain. It looks like chain in nature. Every block represents certain information in the form of block number.

Hussein (Hussein 2019) reported about research challenges and future application of IoT. Generally, IoT is used for different applications, such as health care, smart cities, smart agriculture, logistics and retail. However, IoT has few challenges and implications. These should be fixed out to enable mass adoption. IoTs provide many benefits, but the implementation of it can take different problems because of their limited computational capabilities and tough nature of tasks which they perform. Therefore, to avoid this issue, they will implement BC technology because it has got the interest of many industries to address the issues actually faced by them various algorithms using block chain.

Ana et al. (Ana et al. 2018) integrated IoT with block chain. It improves security and more efficient supply chain. However, they identified some challenges regarding scalability issues. The work done by them will cast a shadow for the future of the cryptocurrency.

Panarello et al. (Panarello et al. 2018) published their research on integration of block chain and IoT. They had done the analysis on approaches related to block chain with technological aspect. They introduced the two concepts, i.e., manipulation of devices and management of data. Smooth running of IoT system was studied in detailed.

Memon et al. (Memon et al. 2019) proposed the simulation model which uses the queuing theory. For the performance analysis, various parameters were considered such as system throughput, transactions/block and its mining time, number of transaction, count and waiting of memory pool.

Mohanta et al. (Mohanta et al. 2019) suggested two important technologies in an information system that is bitcoin and Blockchain. Blockchain is a publicly available digital ledger and peer-to-peer decentralized transaction. In their study, they explained the working principle of the Blockchain and architecture. Blockchain solves the problem by decentralization of existing centralized system and also various security problems are addressed. Size of Blockchain is growing. Therefore, there is a challenge to store and verify in an efficient way. In the BC network distributing, task scheduling is a challenging task. They suggested future task to integrate IoT application with BC.

Alamri et al. (Alamri et al. 2019) reported issue, challenges and future directions for Blockchain and the IoT. They concluded that the BIoT environment was challenging in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and telemetry systems or 4G/5G broadband communications. They suggested Blockchain further can be used only in the field of encrypted currencies and it will grow the compatibility of the IoT and Blockchain.

Richardson and Wallace (Richardson and Wallace 2013) reported design aspect of system with BC and Internet of thing. The platform introduced by them was comprehensive as well as immutable log and permits the easy access of the device in real-time practical applications.

Singh et al. (Singh et al. 2020) proposed a BC-based system for providing the secure management of home quarantine. To determine the system application, they offer study for an IoT system which have a laptop, Raspberry Pi, single-board computer, and the Ethereum smart contract platform. They reported that the satisfy efficiency, security and less-cost necessities for BC and IoT is best. The BC will act as a connection between the two sides, i.e., double-BC and BC-sharing technology. Both can be used for the resource consumption and limiting the transaction processing time.

Zorzo et al. (Zorzo et al. 2018) studied the integration of Blockchain along with the Internet of thing. They carried out the overview study about BC-IoT in relation with the key specifications, various challenges and applications.

Architecture of system with IoT and Blockchain

Figure 1 shows clearly the presentation of a general typical diagram of wireless sensor node which is essential in the implementation and functionality of the wireless communication even in IoT. The major components in it are: a sensing unit, processing unit, communications unit, and a power unit. Each unit plays a fundamental role in the functionality of the particular node.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Wireless sensor node is essential for the implementation and functionality of the wireless communication

Full size image

Figure 2 shows the concept of the platform of IoT Blockchain. Raspberry Pi is the heart of this system (Yuehong 2016). Depending on requirement, the coding is done. The system implementation can be done with the scalable simulator in NS2 and MATLAB.

Fig. 2
figure 2

The platform of IoT Blockchain

Full size image

Challenges with wireless sensor network along with IoT and Blockchain

During couple of years, IoT platforms are proliferating enormously in excess of 450 platforms as per the recent analysis by research and markets. These extend from parallel stages able to lodge generic practice cases within diverse areas to perpendicular methods able to report specific market needs (Fraga-Lamas 2016). Obviously, the amalgamations of functional specializations are numerous, such as enabling applications, device management, data analytics, connectivity, and so on. Two types of licensing models are available, viz., proprietary and open source. This leads to the disaster of a fragmented and over-crowded market (Fraga-Lamas 2016; Chong and Kumar 2003). Besides, it is assumed that the IoT technology can play an important role of enabler for several business opportunities and available technical challenges. Although, they are reducing the global IoT adoption. Few of the challenges are mentioned below.

(a) Cybersecurity: It is most serious and challenging hindrance for the IoT. IoT security is associated with the various new conditions and factors which intensify potential threats based on the typical Web security. The IoT devices are isolated hardware solutions and deployment conditions dependant. They are tampered so that it will be impulsive by constructors (Rao et al. 2018). The IoT devices are characteristically interconnected with each other which makes them complex to manage device interactions. Hence, devices are protected from nasty data management. Besides, they have inadequate computational power. As soon as they are connected with the internet and with other devices, they turn out to be an interrelated and intricate system. Hence, the system becomes open to web attacks (Hejazi et al. 2020). Conversely, a generic “one-size-fits-all” security model is tough to contrivance. There is a necessity for innovative security models predicting the specific policies’ development. The best practices should be accomplished both security-by-design methods with specific technical hostage measures designed at various technological stacks (Rao et al. 2018; Hejazi et al. 2020).

(b) Privacy: The enormous data quantity created by IoT devices might provide elaborated information concerning context. The information could be gathered without user consent and open to third parties when pooled by supporting IoT platforms, divesting users about control (Mollah et al. 2017). While managerial policies occur for giving secrecy to users, the provocate is to advance solutions that guarantee on purpose.

(c) Massive data management: Enormous data are generated by IoT devices. These data become a challenging task for the management in terms of communication/transmission, amplification, and storage. Climbable infrastructures are essential to proficiently handle this enormous growing data volume (Sha et al. 2018).

(d) Lack of standardization and interoperability: The IoT standard landscape contains open solutions and is persistently used by multinational and independent organizations or governance body alliances such as ETSI, ITU-T, IETF, and OASIS. From the communication technologies to architectures, various principles shield diverse aspects of IoT products, systems, and services. It trail a cross-domain, neutral approach, while others are valid only to precise vertical domains (Sha et al. 2018). Inappropriately, the unrestrained expansion of standards is further aggravated by the deficiency of accepted standards. This leads to destruction and become a obstacle for the IoT adoption (Yu et al. 2018).

(e) Lack of skills: The intricacy and nonuniformity present in the tools required an IoT domain specific skills. It is very difficult to acquire such skills by administrations. In this scenario, the IoT plays an important role, as it could assure that the right skills are acquired in a effective and proper way (Yu et al. 2018).

Applications of integration of IoT and Blockchain

Above-mentioned literature shows that IoT and Blockchain have a wide area of an application. Few previous researches are explained here with the respective area of application.

Montori et al. (Montori et al. 2018) published application-based research in the area of automation. They used Blockchain for vehicle communication purposes where security is an important scenario. They were unable to get the result for unreliable data. Hence, they suggested this might be a future area for upcoming researcher.

Alvarez-Campana et al. (Alvarez-Campana et al. 2017) published their work on the integration of Internet of thing and Blockchain where they discussed the security at a university campus level. The system was applicable from admin level to end user. They faced the main challenge about power computation for many IoT devices. Using a local model of cloud computing, the problem was resolved. However, it showed the same problem for longer distance.

Jabbar et al. (Jabbar et al. 2020) reported about how the combination block chain and IoT plays an important role in maintaining security in pandemic. They used the platform of the corona pandemic, which is worldwide. The proposed system was based on cryptographic primitive which was useful for management of security. It is also the cost effective and efficient one.

Some other applications of this combination are Ripple, Cryptocurrency, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Nxt, Peercoin, Dash Monero, Namecoin, BitPay, Abra, BitNation, Onename, Keybase, ShoCard, Passport management, e-identity, land registration, birth certificates, follow my vote, Robomed Medrec, Synechron, Ubitquity, Atlant, Slock, DAO, Casino, betting and Gambling, Peerplays, Wagerr, etc.

Security against corona pandemic: home quarantine with integration of Blockchain and IoT

Respiratory disease is observed because of Covid-19, i.e., corona virus. As it is an infectious disease, almost all the countries throughout the world have quarantine citizens for a long time. For continuous tracking of movements of peoples, state governments adopt different novel technologies, like the connection of billions of devices along with sensors over the internet are used to control (Villegas-Ch et al. 2020; Zhang and Wu 2020). Since there is handling of huge data, problem such as privacy and security may arise. To resolve this issue, cryptographic primitives are used at high priority. Proposed model is shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Graphical representation of different parameters in the health care application

Full size image

By survey of the previous year research which was published at various levels, here graphical analysis is done for different parameters for health care application mentioned above. PKE, SKE, MPC, MA-ABS, SKE and CES and SKE (AES/2DES) are the technologies used (Singh et al. 2020; Alhayani and Abdallah 2020).

Conclusion

In the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, usual devices become autonomous and smart. Still, in the security domain (data reliability), there are some challenges. Therefore, there is a urgent need to deliver confidence in vast incoming information source. It is important that to be able to prevent and detect existing threats, the capability to forecast potential threats and attacks in the future. Therefore, we argue that there is a need for deeper research in prophetic IoT security.