IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023 - 45

FIGURE 4. Blockchain implementation in a CIoT
scenario.
depicts a blockchain implementation in a CIoT
scenario.
Decentralization: Blockchain runs on a P2P
network, and the decentralized nature allows
generated data to be available in all of the
participating CIoT devices. There is no centralized
authority in blockchains dispersing
functions and placing trust in the P2P network.
If there are any storage issues in the
CIoT devices, we can use decentralized storage
solutions like IPFS.
Security: In a CIoT scenario, encompassing
sensitive ME-centric data are prone to vulnerabilities,
such as weak passwords and authentication,
unprotected user interfaces, and
insecure data transfer and retrieval mechanisms,
which can disrupt the entire CIoT
application. Blockchain can identify any malicious
users since the hacker needs to access
the whole chain of blocks to access a single
record. The inherent characteristics like
securing the data with cryptography and digital
signatures help in validating the records.
Privacy: Privacy in blockchain canbe enhanced
from four frontiers: smart-contract/key management,
identity data anonymization, data
anonymization, and on-chain data protection.
Techniques like ring signatures, zero-knowledge
proof, homomorphic hiding, mixing, and
differential privacy can enable privacy in the
blockchain.
Immutability: The main crux behind the concept
of blockchain is to create a chain of
immutable blocks that can hold data in each
block. Before chaining and confirming the
transactions, there is a tamper-resistant consensus
with all the participating nodes.
FIGURE 5. Concept of the digital twins.
Changing records attempts to compromise
all the nodes, which is not possible, making
all the records in a blockchain immutable. In
the CIoT scenario, immutability capacity
blockchain can enable complete privacy to
ME-centric consumer data.
Auditability: One more important challenge in
the CIoT landscape is data governance and
auditability. While using blockchains, all the
peers hold a copy of the transactions. The
decentralized ledger copies can give access
to all transaction records overcoming the
challenges of auditability in an ME-centric
environment.
Digital Twins
The complex and dynamic CIoT architecture
requires pervasive interaction among heterogeneous
CIoT devices, various protocols,
and applications, and the competence to easily
migrate from one computing environment to
another. Concurrently, indispensable features
like a continuous upgrade of the devices, new
devices, maintenance, and integration need
coherent operations of CIoT applications. Digital
twins based on microservices enable the
development of IoT applications by splitting
down IoT functionalities into lightweight, modular,
and flexible units that work independently
without affecting the overall IoT
ecosystem's performance.13 A digital twin is a
digital, virtual representation of a physical IoT
object or system, as shown in Figure 5. A digital
twin as a virtual object does not merely
exist as a copy to the physical asset, but with
edge computing, it can offer some of the following
advantages.14
May/June 2023
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