MBCSD-IoT: A Multi-Level Blockchain-Assisted SDN-Based IoT Architecture for Secured E-Voting System

For designing a reliable voting mechanism, the present study undertook an investigation to design a secured and automated e-voting infrastructure namely MBCSD-IoT. For this purpose, a multi-level voting architecture has been designed where most of the nodes consist of Blockchain-assisted SDN-based IoT infrastructure where Blockchain has been embedded in the said IoT system to provide reliable security. In MBCSD-IoT, four levels of hierarchies have been designed namely Booth, District, State and Country Level layers. An Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is designed which is equipped with suitable security systems like Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and hash functions. This multiple hierarchical infrastructure will ensure secured storage of voting data using blockchain at multiple levels. Here, voter authentication is automated using biometric inputs. Automated counting of votes is executed at the top-most level of the hierarchy which helps to save extra expenditure. The past literature investigation reveals insignificant number of works in this direction. The present work ensures a suitable infrastructure for implementing a better-secured voting process in large democracy. The whole system has been designed and tested in architectural point of view both in simulation and testbed considering all the security aspects. Experimental results obtained ensured satisfactory performance with respect to throughput, latency, and packet loss.