A generic framework for a peer to peer blockchain based fog architecture in industrial automation

Abstract

Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) is referred exclusively to smart and cheap sensor based devices lying on top of machines or machine parts, to collect and process massive raw data and therefore to make intelligent decisions autonomously, without human intervention, according to the Industry 4.0 requirements. However, there are still challenges to address, such as the massive amount of data generated in high speeds and the fast processing requirements and also challenges in the security domain, such as data integrity and ID authentication. Currently decentralized IoT/Fog network architectures would come in handy, in order to release data processing 'burden' from isolated Cloud servers. On the other hand, Blockchain has emerged as a key technology for handling manufacturing, raw or processed data, in safety and security environment, while distributing it to the physical world, consisting of heterogeneous entities, such as manufacturers, retailers, suppliers, logistics agents or simple clients, thus reinforcing the IT and automation potentials of product supply chain. In this paper we propose an abstraction layer architecture that solves all that issues. On the one hand, there is a decentralized IOT/Fog and cloud framework for real time machine condition monitoring (MCM) and fault prediction, where computational demanding tasks are distributed across fog nodes and decision fusion rules are set and controlled by the Cloud. On the other hand, a peer to peer Blockchain ledger is also proposed for integrating the IOT/Fog, MCM network architecture along with other entities of the physical world, making supply chain network more efficient and intelligent. The proposed generic architecture can be applied to other application areas as well. © 2019 IEEE.