Guest Editorial for Special Issue on Blockchain for Internet-of-Things and Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are increasingly commonplace, with applications in energy, health, transportation, and many other sectors. One of the major requirements in CPS is that the interaction between cyber-world and man-made physical world (exchanging and sharing of data and information with other physical objects and systems) must be safe, especially in bi-directional communications. In particular, there is a need to suitably address security and/or privacy concerns in this human-in-the-loop CPS ecosystem. However, existing centralized architecture models in CPS, and also the more general IoT systems, have a number of associated limitations, in terms of single point of failure, data privacy, security, robustness, etc. Such limitations reinforce the importance of designing reliable, secure and privacy-preserving distributed solutions and other novel approaches, such as those based on blockchain technology due to its features (e.g., decentralization, transparency and immutability of data). This is the focus of this special issue.