Blockchain-Enabled Decentralized Secure Big Data of Remote Sensing

Abstract

Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising candidate for space exploration and sustainable energy systems. This transformative technology offers secure and decentralized strategies to process and manipulate space resources. Remote sensing provides viable potential with the coexistence of open data from various sources, such as short-range sensors on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or Internet-of-Things (IoT) tags and far-range sensors incorporated on satellites. Open data resources have most recently emerged as attractive connecting parties where owners have shown consent to share data. However, most data owners are anonymous and untrustworthy, which makes shared data likely insecure and unreliable. At present, there are several tools that distribute open data, serving as an intermediate party to link users with data owners. However, these platforms are operated by central authorities who develop guidelines for data ownership, integrity, and access, consequently restricting both users and data owners. Therefore, the need and feasibility of a decentralized system arise for data sharing and retrieving without involving these intermediate limiting parties. This study proposes a blockchain-based system without any central authority to share and retrieve data. Our proposed system features (i) data sharing, (ii) maintaining the historical data, and (iii) retrieving and evaluation of data along with enhanced security. We have also discussed the use of blockchain algorithms based on smart contracts to track space transactions and communications in a secure, verifiable, and transparent manner. We tested the suggested framework in the Windows environment by writing smart contracts prototype on an Ethereum TESTNET blockchain. The results of the study showed that the suggested strategy is efficient, practicable, and free of common security attacks and vulnerabilities.