Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems

An increasing amount of research focuses on integrating the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to address the requirements of traceability applications for Industry 4.0. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of several aspects of these new blockchain-based traceability syste...

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Main Authors: Miguel Pincheira, Massimo Vecchio, Raffaele Giaffreda
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-04-01
Series:Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/10/3/57
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author Miguel Pincheira
Massimo Vecchio
Raffaele Giaffreda
author_facet Miguel Pincheira
Massimo Vecchio
Raffaele Giaffreda
author_sort Miguel Pincheira
collection DOAJ
description An increasing amount of research focuses on integrating the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to address the requirements of traceability applications for Industry 4.0. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of several aspects of these new blockchain-based traceability systems. For instance, very few works have studied blockchain’s impact on the resources of constrained IoT sensors. Similarly, the infrastructure costs of these blockchain-based systems are not widely understood. This paper characterizes the resources of low-cost IoT sensors and provides a monetary cost model for blockchain infrastructure to support blockchain-based traceability systems. First, we describe and implement a farm-to-fork case study using public and private blockchain networks. Then, we analyze the impact of blockchain in six different resource-limited IoT devices in terms of disk and memory footprint, processing time, and energy consumption. Next, we present an infrastructure cost model and use it to identify the costs for the public and private networks. Finally, we evaluate the traceability of a product in different scenarios. Our results showed that low-cost sensors could directly interact with both types of blockchains with minimal energy overhead. Furthermore, our cost model showed that setting a private blockchain infrastructure costs approximately the same as that managing 50 products on a public blockchain network.
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spelling doaj.art-43806545992741eab19e81c63638bd122023-11-23T19:13:56ZengMDPI AGSystems2079-89542022-04-011035710.3390/systems10030057Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability SystemsMiguel Pincheira0Massimo Vecchio1Raffaele Giaffreda2Fondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123 Trento, ItalyFondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123 Trento, ItalyFondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123 Trento, ItalyAn increasing amount of research focuses on integrating the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to address the requirements of traceability applications for Industry 4.0. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of several aspects of these new blockchain-based traceability systems. For instance, very few works have studied blockchain’s impact on the resources of constrained IoT sensors. Similarly, the infrastructure costs of these blockchain-based systems are not widely understood. This paper characterizes the resources of low-cost IoT sensors and provides a monetary cost model for blockchain infrastructure to support blockchain-based traceability systems. First, we describe and implement a farm-to-fork case study using public and private blockchain networks. Then, we analyze the impact of blockchain in six different resource-limited IoT devices in terms of disk and memory footprint, processing time, and energy consumption. Next, we present an infrastructure cost model and use it to identify the costs for the public and private networks. Finally, we evaluate the traceability of a product in different scenarios. Our results showed that low-cost sensors could directly interact with both types of blockchains with minimal energy overhead. Furthermore, our cost model showed that setting a private blockchain infrastructure costs approximately the same as that managing 50 products on a public blockchain network.https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/10/3/57blockchainInternet of Thingssmart contractstraceabilitysupply chaincosts
spellingShingle Miguel Pincheira
Massimo Vecchio
Raffaele Giaffreda
Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems
Systems
blockchain
Internet of Things
smart contracts
traceability
supply chain
costs
title Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems
title_full Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems
title_fullStr Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems
title_full_unstemmed Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems
title_short Characterization and Costs of Integrating Blockchain and IoT for Agri-Food Traceability Systems
title_sort characterization and costs of integrating blockchain and iot for agri food traceability systems
topic blockchain
Internet of Things
smart contracts
traceability
supply chain
costs
url https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/10/3/57
work_keys_str_mv AT miguelpincheira characterizationandcostsofintegratingblockchainandiotforagrifoodtraceabilitysystems
AT massimovecchio characterizationandcostsofintegratingblockchainandiotforagrifoodtraceabilitysystems
AT raffaelegiaffreda characterizationandcostsofintegratingblockchainandiotforagrifoodtraceabilitysystems