Through the use of sensors and other edge devices and infrastructure, IoT is transforming people lives also revolutionizing the way enterprises operate. Although, one of the major challenges revealed in the exploitation of IoT functionalities regards the need of protecting collected information at all levels of IoT ecosystems. Unfortunately, also due to the growing number of connected devices, data security has become extremely complex. One of the revolutionary technologies that have the potential to address some of the IoT security, privacy and scalability challenges is the Blockchain. Therefore, this work discusses the integration of IoT systems and the Blockchain technologies with a specific focus on low-power devices enhanced through the functionalities of Algorand, a self-sustaining, decentralized, Blockchain-based network which has all the potential to shape the future of the Blockchain context, offering decentralization, scalability and security.
A scientific article was presented in September 2021 at an International Conference called SpliTech that deals with technology, theory and application aspects of E-Health, Smart Environment/City, Energy and Engineering Modelling.
This work aimed at demonstrating the applicability of the Algorand Blockchain to low-power IoT devices without any modification to hardware or software components of the chosen devices and Blockchain. Specifically, the study was focused on two of the most spread IoT devices in the market: the STMicroelectronics STM32MP157A-DK1 discovery kit and the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. After a comprehensive analysis of the application of the Blockchain on IoT devices, some experiments were designed to test the applicability of Algorand on the selected low-power IoT devices. The results show that both devices are ready to be exploited for the use of the Algorand Blockchain on low- power IoT devices. In addition, the experiments demonstrate that they are also capable of publishing transactions to the Algorand Blockchain in a few seconds.