Blockchain applications for the Internet of Things: Systematic review and challenges

Abstract

Technological advancements have always been influencing our lives. Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain (BC) are emerging as potentially disruptive technologies. Whereby, the IoT is a system of inter-related devices with unique identifiers for data sharing and device management and control. IoT is based on the integration of traditional technologies including embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, and automation. While, the concept of IoT is continuously evolving with the convergence of multiple technologies including real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensor, and embedded systems. On the other hand, BC technology is a distributed ledger used to maintain the transaction logs of a network, and it has started revolutionizing data provenance, storage, secure, and traceable transaction management systems. There is limited use of blockchain technology for a fully decentralized, untrusted, and secure environment in the field of IoT. This article reviews the current state-of-art blockchain technology and its current utilization in different application domains of IoT. Furthermore, it presents the use of blockchain technology with digital ledger technology (DLT) and IoT. Similarly, the notable challenges of BC and IoT integration are presented. To the best of our knowledge, there is no such SLR available that provides a comprehensive review in this domain. Applying blockchain to solve IoT problems improves IoT security. Moreover, a taxonomy of application domains is presented, which can be integrated with BC and IoT. The article identifies and discusses open research issues and challenges that need to be addressed to harness the potential of BC technology for IoT.