Application-oriented Block Generation for Consortium Blockchain-based IoT Systems with Dynamic Device Management

Due to its salient features such as immutability and auditability, Blockchain is becoming more integrated into Internet of Things (IoT) for enhancing security and developing a decentralized IoT framework. However, different IoT applications require different transaction processing performance, which brings challenges to the convergence of blockchains in IoT. Moreover, the membership of a distributed IoT system may fluctuate when an IoT device joins or leaves the system. The dynamic nature of IoT systems also introduces new challenges for device management. Accordingly, we propose an application-oriented block generation (AOBG) scheme for blockchain-enabled IoT with dynamic device management and conditional traceability. Specifically, we first construct a framework for a consortium blockchain-based IoT system, including structures for application-oriented transactions and blocks, and consensus mechanism. We present different miners respectively for processing urgent and ordinary transactions adaptively with applications. Then, an application-oriented block generation protocol is proposed for this framework based on group signature. The group signature is used to achieve anonymity, traceability, and non-frameability. Combined time-bound keys in group signature with node accounts in blockchain, the proposed scheme can realize efficient transaction verification, dynamic device management, conditional traceability with data security and privacy preservation. Extensive experiments demonstrate high efficiency of the proposed scheme.