Secure and Low-Latency Communication in Edge Computing Environments Using Blockchain-Enabled IoT Architecture

Abstract

The concept of edge computing has become a key paradigm of facilitating real-time communication in Internet of Things (IoT) nexus by moving computation to end devices. Although decentralised edge infrastructures have latency benefits, they pose a serious security risk through identity spoofing, replay attacks, data modification, and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Blockchain technology provides decentralised trust and data immutability but standard blockchain systems are characterised by high confirmation latency and computation overhead making them unsuitable with delay-sensitive IoT applications. In this research paper, the authors suggest a hierarchical blockchain-based IoT model which is to be implemented to provide secure and low-latency communication in edge computing settings. The suggested system is a consortium blockchain implemented on an optimized Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus mechanism executed in localized edge clusters. A hybrid strategy of off-chain/on-chain data management and a scheme estimating the delay of micro-block generation are also presented to minimise the duration of communication. Formal latency model is created which is used to analyse the time of transaction confirmation, and the implementation of the architecture is done with multi-node edge testbed, created with Hyperledger Fabric. The experiments show 38 to 45 percent decrease in end-to end latency and enhancement of transaction throughput as compared to traditional blockchain-IoT systems and they resist Sybil, replay and tampering attacks. These results confirm that edge architectures supported by blockchain can meet the security and real time performance goals of the next generation IoT systems.