Implementation of Blockchain Consensus Algorithm on Embedded Architecture

Abstract

The adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology across many applications, such as autonomous systems, communication, and healthcare, is driving the market's growth at a positive rate. The emergence of advanced data analytics techniques such as blockchain for connected IoT devices has the potential to reduce the cost and increase in cloud platform adoption. Blockchain is a key technology for real-time IoT applications providing trust in distributed robotic systems running on embedded hardware without the need for certification authorities. There are many challenges in blockchain IoT applications such as the power consumption and the execution time. These specific constraints have to be carefully considered besides other constraints such as number of nodes and data security. In this paper, a novel approach is discussed based on hybrid HW/SW architecture and designed for Proof of Work (PoW) consensus which is the most used consensus mechanism in blockchain. The proposed architecture is validated using the Ethereum blockchain with the Keccak 256 and the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) ZedBoard development kit. This implementation shows improvement in execution time of 338% and minimizing power consumption of 255% compared to the use of Nvidia Maxwell GPUs.