Abstract
In recent decades, modern societies are experiencing an increasing adoption of interconnected smart devices. This revolution involves not only canonical devices such as smartphones and tablets, but also simple objects like light bulbs. Named the Internet of Things (IoT), this ever-growing scenario offers enormous opportunities in many areas of modern society, especially if joined by other emerging technologies such as, for example, the blockchain. Indeed, the latter allows users to certify transactions publicly, without relying on central authorities or intermediaries. This work aims to exploit the scenario above by proposing a novel blockchain-based distributed paradigm to secure localization services, here named the Internet of Entities (IoE). It represents a mechanism for the reliable localization of people and things, and it exploits the increasing number of existing wireless devices and blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies. Moreover, unlike most of the canonical localization approaches, it is strongly oriented towards the protection of the users’ privacy. Finally, its implementation requires minimal efforts since it employs the existing infrastructures and devices, thus giving life to a new and wide data environment, exploitable in many domains, such as e-health, smart cities, and smart mobility.
Highlights
Our everyday activities produce an ever increasing amount of information, as each of them is accompanied by a large number of devices aimed at supporting us
This work aims to exploit the scenario above by proposing a novel blockchain-based distributed paradigm to secure localization services, here named the Internet of Entities (IoE). It represents a mechanism for the reliable localization of people and things, and it exploits the increasing number of existing wireless devices and blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies
A synergistic combination of security and anonymity is the basis of their success, since this paradigm allows the users to exchange money without involving trusted authorities as intermediates. The strategy behind this revolutionary way to operate is mainly based on the exploitation of digital signature schemes, to implement a fully-decentralized and immutable public ledger where all the transactions are recorded. Such a ledger is known as the blockchain and involves a distributed consensus protocol operating in a peer-to-peer network [2]
Summary
Our everyday activities produce an ever increasing amount of information, as each of them is accompanied by a large number of devices aimed at supporting us (e.g., smartbands, credit cards, home automation devices, and so on). A synergistic combination of security and anonymity is the basis of their success, since this paradigm allows the users to exchange money without involving trusted authorities as intermediates The strategy behind this revolutionary way to operate is mainly based on the exploitation of digital signature schemes, to implement a fully-decentralized and immutable public ledger where all the transactions are recorded. This section aims to introduce the most important concepts exploited in this work It starts by offering an overview of the Mobile Network and Internet of Thing environments, delving into the notion of blockchain and its applications. The base stations grant the connection between mobile devices when they move between cells
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