A Fog Computing Architecture to Share Sensor Data by Means of Blockchain Functionality

Considering rapidly evolving Internet-of-Things services such as smart buildings, smart homes or secure e-health applications, the fog computing concept provides a technical basis for innovative application scenarios of the blockchain technology. We develop an enhancement of the fog computing architecture HCL-BaFog by the blockchain functionality to collect and securely share sensor data. They may arise from private IoT applications such as ambient assisted living which incorporate the need of an immutable, local storage and a sharing of protected real-time sensor data monitored at patients’ or people’s homes. Our proof-of-concept employs the fully virtualized functionality of a permissioned blockchain and a network of fog computing nodes and utilizes the container orchestration and management system Docker and the MultiChain framework. We investigate some basic performance metrics of our storage-and-sharing approach using a test bed of Raspberry Pi SBCs. Finally, some conclusions on the developed fog computing architecture with its integrated blockchain functionality are discussed and its current limitations are revealed.