The Trusted IoT Alliance Architecture
One of the most exciting outcomes from the Trusted IoT Alliance Face 2 Face meeting in Berlin was the Trusted IoT Reference Architecture.
This architecture represents outcomes from years of work by alliance members for looking for integration points between IoT and blockchain applications. This architecture should be generic across use cases and should empower project managers to avoid reinventing the wheel.
IOT and Blockchain use cases are about the assets in the field that are connected to smart devices from gold bars to shipping containers. The asset is the prime mover in an IOT & Blockchain application.
The Trusted IoT Alliance Reference Architecture focus on 4 primary integration patterns.
1. Asset to Cloud to Blockchain.
In this pattern, the general architecture of legacy IoT deployments are preserved. IoT Devices still continue to drive business logic through gateways to clouds like like AWS, Azure or Predix. The blockchain layer provides a trust anchor or intra-organizational data plane between clouds.
End to end authentication can be preserved if the IoT device cryptographically signs data and prevents the cloud of modifying data intended for the blockchain layer. The cloud still chooses what gets passed on.
The Alliance’s MQTTT protocol is a useful tool for following this pattern.
2. Gateway to Cloud to Blockchain
A similar pattern to 1 but aimed at low resource devices that do n directly connect to the cloud.
3. Gateway/Fog to Blockchain
This patten embodies the emerging compute pattern that is broadly being called fog computing. This pattern is characterized by edge compute processing data with considerable autonomy. The blockchain is promising control plan for IoT devices and substitutes for a centralized cloud based control plane.
4. Direct connection between IoT Devices and Blockchain.
This pattern frequently appears when experimenting with machine to machine payment scenarios or directly authenticating blockchain data in an IoT context. This requires an IoT device to be able run a light client or full node and connect peer to peer with other participants in the blockchain system.
The Alliance USN protocol defines a compelling way of managing access credentials on an Ethereum compatible chain via this pattern.
Trusted Asset are :
- Have the ability to provide tamper resistant storage of cryptographic keys and execution of business logic
- Secure software
- A device lifecycle managed via blockchain technology
Future work:
The Architecture above covers many of the lessons from our members from the early days of Trusted IoT.
The Alliance is now starting to focus on the next set of questions.
- Close integration between smart contract and IoT devices
- Scalability patterns and reccomendations
- Protocol design patterns and reccomendations
Join us at the Trusted IoT Alliance Architecture call on March 10th to learn more. Reach out via email.
