Decentralized Industrial IoT Data Management Based on Blockchain and IPFS

The wide application of Internet of Things (IoT) has fostered the development of Industry 4.0. In manufacturing domain, Industrial IoT (IIoT) are key components of the Factories of the Future (FoF). The big IIoT data are the foundation of implementing data-driven strategies. In current industrial practice, most of these IIoT data are wasted or fragmented in data silos due to security and privacy concerns. Novel data management approaches are required to replace traditional centralized data management systems. The rapid development of blockchain technologies provides a novel solution for this challenge leveraging its unique characteristics such as decentralization, immutability and traceability. However, blockchain is inefficient for exchanging big data due to transaction throughput limits. The peer-to-peer InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) provides a suitable complement for blockchain. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a decentralized IIoT data management approach based on blockchain and IPFS technology. The architecture and enabling technologies of the proposed system are introduced. A proof-of-concept implementation is realized and relevant experiments are conducted. The results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed approach.