Key technologies and solutions for the application of blockchain in ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment

As an integrated application of distributed data storage, peer-to-peer transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm and other technologies, blockchain is considered to be a disruptive innovation in computing models following mainframes, personal computers and the Internet, and is brewing a new technological innovation and industrial transformation on a global scale.

The integration and innovation of blockchain technology and the Internet of Things is considered to be a match made in heaven. On the one hand, the physical tamper-proofing of IoT devices can help achieve the "trusted process" of blockchain data from off-chain to on-chain; on the other hand, blockchain links together separate IoT networks with different protocols, and through security mechanisms, smart contracts, etc., forms a new model of data sharing and collaboration across systems and boundaries.

The ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment based on the traditional centralized distributed network structure faces huge challenges in terms of network carrying capacity, server load, data security, etc. when billions of massive terminal devices are connected. Blockchain technology, which has the characteristics of decentralization, trustlessness and data encryption, provides an opportunity to solve these problems. This article will explain how to use blockchain thinking to combine blockchain technology with the Internet of Things to improve the performance of the ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment in terms of network structure, cost reduction, trustworthiness, multi-agent collaboration and edge computing. Improvement plans are also given for a series of potential problems such as performance, storage, and energy consumption.

Research highlights

1. Blockchain technology

Blockchain is a decentralized distributed database with no center. Each node in the blockchain will synchronously copy the entire ledger, and the information is transparent and difficult to tamper with. Blockchain technology is a new distributed infrastructure and computing paradigm that uses block chain data structures to verify and store data, uses distributed node consensus algorithms to generate and update data, uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access, and uses smart contracts composed of automated script codes to program and operate data.

It should be pointed out that Bitcoin is only an application of blockchain technology, and blockchain is not equal to Bitcoin. The development of blockchain must break away from the thinking and stereotype of "Bitcoin blockchain" and focus on using relevant technologies to solve practical problems in the real world and give full play to the positive role of blockchain:

(1) "Decentralization" is only a feature of the Bitcoin blockchain, and does not mean that all blockchains must be decentralized. "Public chains" are not a necessary part of blockchains. Blockchains can also be run independently and centrally on private computer clusters, or attract certain qualified participants to join, forming a semi-centralized "alliance chain" operating system jointly run by the computer groups of the participants.

(2) Bitcoin and other network systems are endogenous “currencies” and are not inseparable from blockchain.

Blockchain does not necessarily require an incentive mechanism like Bitcoin, that is, the focus of blockchain operations can be shifted: from focusing on "mining" to produce "digital cryptocurrency" to strengthening the verification of the legality, authenticity, and accuracy of assets and the authenticity and accuracy of the identities of both parties to the transaction, and then integrating blockchain into the real world, truly solving practical problems in the real world, and fully meeting national laws and regulatory requirements to avoid becoming a tool for illegal transactions, terrorist transmission, etc.

2. Problems with the ubiquitous Internet of Things for power transmission and transformation equipment

In the construction plan of the Internet of Things platform for power transmission and transformation equipment, the perception data obtained by massive sensors will be uploaded to the access node through the aggregation node, and finally enter the server of the cloud platform through the access controller and control gateway of the network layer. This solution is essentially still a centralized distributed network structure, and faces some key challenges when facing the access and data transmission of hundreds of millions of IoT terminal devices. On the one hand, supporting the access and service request response of massive terminal sensors and information is an inevitable requirement in the future. Centralized services make the load of its servers and databases increase sharply and even unsustainable. On the other hand, the traditional Internet of Things is threatened in terms of data security, privacy protection, authentication and access control.

3. Integration of blockchain technology and ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment

This article proposes to use blockchain thinking to improve the construction of ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment:

(1) Use the core idea of ​​“decentralization” in blockchain to solve the problems inherent in “centralization”, such as insufficient capacity, high costs, and low trust.

(2) Balance "decentralization" and "centralization" to achieve the intersection and integration of ABCD, namely artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data (AI, Blockchain, Cloud computing, big Data, ABCD).

(3) Use smart contracts to achieve multi-agent collaboration in a decentralized environment.

Under the guidance of blockchain thinking, this paper proposes a blockchain-based ubiquitous Internet of Things system architecture for power equipment, as shown in Figure 1, which consists of massive terminal sensors, blockchain gateways, blockchains, cloud platforms, etc.

Figure 1 The ubiquitous Internet of Things construction architecture for power equipment based on blockchain

4. Key technologies

(1) Partitioned parallel high-throughput alliance chain design

One feature of the ubiquitous power Internet of Things is that it is easy to divide into zones. For a substation as small as this, all sensors such as partial discharge, gas composition, temperature and humidity, video, infrared, etc. installed in the station are built into a small blockchain based on the aggregation node or access node. A larger blockchain is built between several substations through access controllers or access gateways. In this way, the original blockchain is divided into many partitions, and transaction records will be processed in parallel in different partitions. Therefore, the architecture shown in Figure 1 can be improved to the partitioned parallel alliance chain shown in Figure 2. The ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment is reasonably partitioned or parallelized according to the region or business, and then data and service transactions are carried out with cloud platform nodes in the interconnected chain through cross-chain interconnected nodes. The consensus mechanism for intra-chip transactions uses pipeline technology to optimize efficiency, and further improves efficiency through a random rotation accounting node collection mechanism, thereby ultimately building a partitioned parallel high-throughput alliance chain that is more suitable for the ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment.

Figure 2 Partitioned parallel high-throughput alliance chain structure

(2) Improvement of consensus algorithm

High resource consumption is one of the important factors that limit the application of blockchain. The traditional mining-based bookkeeping right competition method is a typical consensus mechanism with huge free consumption, which needs to be optimized when applied to the Internet of Things. The consensus mechanism based on voting (such as the PBFT algorithm) and further improving efficiency through grouping can effectively reduce resource consumption and increase transaction speed and throughput, and is more suitable for the ubiquitous power Internet of Things environment.

(3) Smart contracts in the ubiquitous Internet of Things

Smart contracts play a key role in breaking through the data and collaboration barriers between nodes in the ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment proposed in this article. A simple application is used to illustrate its operating mechanism. Assume that a smart contract deploys an alarm threshold for busbar temperature data. When a sensor initiates a data transaction, the data is first sent to the smart contract in the blockchain by the IoT gateway. The smart contract determines whether the data is temperature data and whether it exceeds the threshold, and sends the result to the agreed IoT gateway or cloud platform. At the same time, the smart contract broadcasts the data to the entire network to complete the subsequent data transaction process.

(4) Encryption algorithm

At present, the encryption algorithms used by major blockchain platforms mostly adopt international standards, such as SHA256. From the perspective of national security, data security should be taken into consideration at the beginning of the construction of the ubiquitous power Internet of Things. Developing a blockchain platform based on national encryption algorithms in the ubiquitous Internet of Things for power equipment can effectively ensure the security and confidentiality of the ubiquitous power Internet of Things data.

(5) Data compression

Each node involved in maintaining the blockchain needs to store a ledger locally. As data transactions proceed, data expansion is inevitable. Combined with the ubiquitous IoT system architecture of power equipment based on blockchain, access gateways or access controllers with stronger hardware performance can be classified as heavy nodes, while aggregation nodes or access nodes with slightly weaker performance can be classified as light nodes. Heavy nodes will store the full amount of data on the blockchain, while light nodes only store the 256 hash value of the Merkle root node, that is, they only participate in transaction verification and do not store data.