Modeling and Analysis of Data Trading on Blockchain-based Market in IoT Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a model for decentralized IoT data trading using blockchain technology over NB-IoT, analyzing communication efficiency to benchmark protocols in terms of latency and energy use.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model for DLT-based IoT data trading over NB-IoT and benchmarks three protocols to evaluate their communication efficiency.

Findings

Characterized latency and energy consumption of three DLT-based protocols.

Provided a benchmark for IoT data trading protocols.

Supported massive environmental sensing applications.

Abstract

Mobile devices with embedded sensors for data collection and environmental sensing create a basis for a cost-effective approach for data trading. For example, these data can be related to pollution and gas emissions, which can be used to check the compliance with national and international regulations. The current approach for IoT data trading relies on a centralized third-party entity to negotiate between data consumers and data providers, which is inefficient and insecure on a large scale. In comparison, a decentralized approach based on distributed ledger technologies (DLT) enables data trading while ensuring trust, security, and privacy. However, due to the lack of understanding of the communication efficiency between sellers and buyers, there is still a significant gap in benchmarking the data trading protocols in IoT environments. Motivated by this knowledge gap, we introduce a model for DLT-based IoT data trading over the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) system, intended to support massive environmental sensing. We characterize the communication efficiency of three basic DLT-based IoT data trading protocols via NB-IoT connectivity in terms of latency and energy consumption. The model and analyses of these protocols provide a benchmark for IoT data trading applications.