The Quest for Fully Smart Autonomous Business Networks in IoT Platforms

Abstract

The evolution of the business networks is fostering the demand for more connected devices to execute tangled and sophisticated business operations. This leverages complicated business networks space to include scalable network layers, more devices, and platforms relying on Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Despite the fact that traditional IoT platforms usually target the technical side for IoT applications, they are not prepared enough to be easily integrated with pluggable and executable business logic or smart contracts. This makes it difficult to control a collection of shared business network resources in a standard and decentralized manner. With the rise of FinTech due to blockchain technology, it becomes possible to seamlessly engage business networks with financial digital assets. Consequently, combining IoT platforms with blockchain will drive new ways for better services consuming, transparency and products that depend on crowd-based economy [12]. In this paper, Sitechain is proposed as a new architecture to integrate IoT platforms with blockchain technology. The proposed architecture is not locked to specific IoT platforms but it can be extended to support different platforms in a standard, systematic and easy way. Sitechain is demonstrated by integrating Sitewhere and FIWARE IoT platforms with Hyperledger Fabric as a private blockchain network manager. Moreover a modeling language supported by Hyperledger composer is used to easily develop smart contracts and generate RESTful APIs, therefore any smart contract transaction events can be mapped into actions on remote devices. The system testing is performed using a large set of connected shared devices that are deployed as part of private business networks. The results are recorded in the conclusion section.