Blockchain-enabled Fog and Edge Computing: Concepts, Architectures and Applications

Concepts, Architectures and Applications

Muhammad Maaz Rehan, Mubashir Husain Rehmani, Muhammad Maaz Rehan, Mubashir Husain Rehmani

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000096163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cloud Computing
• Index: Computer Science

This comprehensive book unveils the working relationship of blockchain and the fog/edge computing. The contents of the book have been designed in such a way that the reader will not only understand blockchain and fog/edge computing but will also understand their co-existence and their collaborative power to solve a range of versatile problems.

The first part of the book covers fundamental concepts and the applications of blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing. These include: Internet of Things, Tactile Internet, Smart City; and E-challan in the Internet of Vehicles. The second part of the book covers security and privacy related issues of blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing. These include, hardware primitive based Physical Unclonable Functions; Secure Management Systems; security of Edge and Cloud in the presence of blockchain; secure storage in fog using blockchain; and using differential privacy for edge-based Smart Grid over blockchain.

This book is written for students, computer scientists, researchers and developers, who wish to work in the domain of blockchain and fog/edge computing. One of the unique features of this book is highlighting the issues, challenges, and future research directions associated with Blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing paradigm. We hope the readers will consider this book a valuable addition in the domain of Blockchain and fog/edge computing.

Part I

Fundamental concepts and applications of blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing

Chapter 1

From blockchain Internet of Things (B-IoT) towards decentralising the Tactile Internet

Abdeljalil Beniiche, Amin Ebrahimzadeh, and Martin Maier

CONTENTS

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Blockchain technologies

1.2.1 Ethereum versus Bitcoin blockchains

1.2.2 Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs)

1.3 Blockchain IoT and edge computing

1.3.1 Blockchain IoT (B-IoT): Recent progress and related work

1.3.2 Blockchain-enabled edge computing

1.4 The IEEE P1918.1 Tactile Internet

1.4.1 The Tactile Internet: Key principles

1.4.2 Human-agent-robot teamwork

1.4.3 Low-latency FiWi-enhanced LTE-A HetNets with AI-enhanced MEC

1.4.3.1 Low-latency FiWi-enhanced LTE-A HetNets

1.4.3.2 AI-enhanced MEC: Pushing AI to the edge

1.5 Decentralising the Tactile Internet

1.5.1 Decentralised edge intelligence

1.5.2 Crowdsourcing: Expanding the HO workforce

1.6 Blockchain, AI, and human intelligence: The path forward

1.6.1 Cognitive-assistance-based intelligence amplification

1.6.2 HITL hybrid-augmented intelligence

1.6.3 The rise of the decentralised self-organising cooperative

1.6.4 Nudging towards human augmentation

1.7 Open challenges and future work

1.8 Conclusions

References

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The Internet has been constantly evolving from the mobile Internet to the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) and future Tactile Internet. Similarly, the capabilities of future 5G networks will extend far beyond those of previous generations of mobile communication. Beside 1000-fold gains in area capacity, 10 Gb/s peak data rates, and connections for at least 100 billion devices, an important aspect of the 5G vision is decentralisation. While 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular networks were built under the design premise of having complete control at the infrastructure side, 5G systems may drop this design assumption and evolve the cell-centric architecture into a more device-centric one. Although there is a significant overlap of design objectives among 5G, IoT, and the Tactile Internet – most notably, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) – each one of them exhibits unique characteristics in terms of underlying communications paradigms and enabling end devices [1].

Today’s Internet is ushering in a new era. While the first generation of digital revolution brought us the Internet of information, the second generation – powered by decentralised blockchain technology – is bringing us the Internet of value, a true peer-to-peer (P2P) platform that has the potential to go far beyond digital currencies and record virtually everything of value to humankind in a distributed fashion without powerful intermediaries [2]. Some refer to decentralised blockchain technology as the ‘alchemy of the 21st century’ because it may leverage end-user equipment for converting computing into digital gold. More importantly, though, according to Don and Alex Tapscott, the blockchain technology enables trusted collaboration that can start to change the way wealth is distributed because people can share more fully in the wealth they create, rather than trying to solve the problem of growing social inequality through the redistribution of wealth only. As a result, decentralised blockchain technology helps create platforms for distributed capitalism and a more inclusive economy, which works best when it works for everyone as the foundation for prosperity. Furthermore, the authors of [3] pointed out the important role of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) applications as a next generation of distributed sensing services for 6G-driving applications whose need for connectivity will require a synergistic mix of URLLC and massive machine type communications (mMTC) to guarantee low latency, reliable connectivity, and scalability. Furthermore, blockchains and smart contracts can improve the security of a wide range of businesses by ensuring that data cannot be damaged, stolen, or lost. In [4], the authors presented a comprehensive survey on the use of blockchain technologies to provide distributed security services. These services include entity authentication, confidentiality, privacy, provenance, and integrity assurances.

A blockchain technology of particular interest is Ethereum, which went live in July 2015. Ethereum made great strides in having its technology accepted as the blockchain standard, when Microsoft Azure started offering it as a service in November 2015.¹ Ethereum was founded by Canadian Vitalik Buterin after his request for creating a wider and more general scripting language for the development of decentralised applications (DApps) that are not limited to cryptocurrencies, a capability that Bitcoin lacked, was rejected by the Bitcoin community [5]. Ethereum enables new forms of economic organisation and distributed models of companies, businesses, and ownership (e.g., self-organised holacracies and member-owned cooperatives). Or as Buterin puts it, while most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, Ethereum automates away the centre. For instance, instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, Ethereum puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly (before Uber’s self-driving cars will eventually wipe out their jobs). Hence, Ethereum does not aim at eliminating jobs, so much as it changes the definition of work. In fact, it gave rise to the first decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) built within the Ethereum project. The DAO is an open-source, distributed software that exists ‘simultaneously nowhere and everywhere’, thereby creating a paradigm shift that offers new opportunities to democratise business and enables entrepreneurs of the future to design their own virtual organisations customised to the optimal needs of their mission, vision, and strategy to change the world [6].

There exist excellent surveys on Bitcoin and other decentralised digital currencies (e.g., [7]). Likewise, the fundamental concepts and potential of blockchain technologies for society and industry in general have been described comprehensively in various existent tutorials (e.g., [8]). In this chapter, we focus on how blockchain technologies can be used in an IoT context by providing an up-to-date survey on recent progress and open challenges for realising the emerging blockchain IoT (B-IoT). Unlike the IoT without any human involvement in its underlying machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, the Tactile Internet is anticipated to keep the human in (rather than out of) the loop by providing real-time transmission of haptic information, (i.e., touch and actuation) for the remote control of physical or virtual objects through the Internet. Towards this end, we elaborate on how Ethereum blockchain technologies, in particular the DAO, may be leveraged to realise future techno-social systems, notably the Tactile Internet, which is yet unclear in how exactly it would work [8].

The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. In Section 1.2.1, we first explain the commonalities of and specific differences between Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains in greater detail. Section 1.3.1 then reviews recent progress and open challenges of the emerging B-IoT. In Section 1.4, after briefly reviewing the key concepts of the emerging Tactile Internet, we introduce the so-called human-agent-robot teamwork (HART) design approach and our proposed low-latency FiWi enhanced LTE-A HetNets based on advanced multi-access edge computing with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. In Section 1.5, we elaborate on the potential role of Ethereum and, in particular the DAO, in helping decentralise the Tactile Internet. Section 1.6 discusses the symbiosis of blockchain, AI, and augmented intelligence in more detail, and Section 1.7 suggests future research areas. Finally, Section 1.8 concludes the chapter.

1.2 BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES

In this section, we give a brief overview of the basic concepts of blockchain technologies, paying a particular attention to the main commonalities and specific differences between Ethereum and Bitcoin. We then introduce the DAO, which represents a salient feature of Ethereum that cannot be found in Bitcoin.

1.2.1 Ethereum versus Bitcoin blockchains

Blockchain technologies have been undergoing several iterations as both public organisations and private corporations seek t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Editors
• Contributors
• PART I Fundamental concepts and applications of blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing
• PART II Security and privacy issues in blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing
• Index