Blockchain-based trust mechanism for digital twin empowered Industrial Internet of Things

Abstract

Emerging technologies such as blockchain and digital twins are essential for the rapid development and employment in Industry 5.0 revolution. With the growing number of industrial IoT nodes, optimizing the network and availing of limited resources to enable secure transmission is difficult. A digital twin is the virtual representation of a physical device that completely depends on sensor data for the critical decision-making simulation process. To this end, we combine a blockchain-based distributed network with a digital twin for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. This paper proposes a blockchain-based Proof of Authority (PoA) trust mechanism to provide high-quality services such as security and data privacy in IIoT. Furthermore, to enhance the authority of decentralized digital twin combined blockchain networks, we introduce a Deterministic Pseudo-Random Generation (DPRG) to generate a genesis block. To evaluate the trustworthiness of the proposed system, we simulate the blockchain network with a digital twin using IIoT sensor nodes. The simulation result shows that the PoA-based authority master nodes can reduce energy consumption and enhance data security.