6G-SANDBOX

The Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned to be an ecosystem of interconnected devices merging the cyber with the physical world to provide many services. The IoT has been in the spotlight of many research efforts in the past few years, and it has already been considered in various use cases, such as smart cities, smart homes, healthcare, etc. However, there are still some IoT challenges that need to be addressed. First, IoT systems are fragmented since there is a plethora of IoT devices from different manufacturers using different protocols and standards. Second, securing IoT services requires complex security solutions, usually relying on advanced cryptographic techniques and algorithms, which have not been designed for IoT, where many devices are limited in processing, memory, and energy resources. With the right design, we argue that digital twins can address both challenges, enhancing IoT systems' interoperability, auditability, and security.

The goal of the “Experimentation: Smart Contract-based Digital Twins for the IoT (SCDT)” project is to assess the feasibility and evaluate the performance of a novel form of decentralised, transparent, auditable, interoperable, and secure smart contract-based digital twins for IoT devices, such as sensors and actuators. Therefore, in this project, we first design and implement the smart contract-based digital twins, and then we evaluate them based on defined key performance indicators (KPIs). In particular, we initially assessed our design on a local testbed at AUEB and then conducted various experiments in the 6G-SANDBOX testbed at Oulu. The evaluation shows that integrating blockchain technology, particularly the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain, with IoT systems is technically feasible and capable of achieving high performance, scalability, and security levels without introducing unbearable overheads.