A Blockchain-Enabled Energy-Efficient Data Collection System for UAV-Assisted IoT

With the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT), more and more applications focus on the detection of unmanned areas. With the assistance of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), IoT devices are able to access the network via aerial base stations. These UAV-assisted IoT applications still face security and energy challenges. The open environment of IoT applications makes the application easy to encounter external invasion. Limited energy of UAV results in the limited lifetime of network access. To address these challenges, researches on IoT security and energy efficiency are becoming hotspots. Nevertheless, in the UAV continuous coverage scenario, there is still an enormous potential to improve the security and efficiency of data collection in IoT applications. In this article, blockchain is introduced into the scene of UAV-assisted IoT, and a data collection system considering security and energy efficiency is proposed. In this system, UAV, as an edge data collection node, provides a long-term network access for IoT devices through regular cruises with recharging. By forwarding data and recording transactions, UAVs get charging coins as rewards. UAVs use charging coins to exchange charging time. UAV swarm builds distributed ledgers based on blockchain to resist the invasion of malicious UAV. In order to reduce energy consumption, this article designs an adaptive linear prediction algorithm. Through this algorithm, IoT devices upload prediction model instead of original data to greatly reduce in-network transmissions. Simulation results show that the proposed system can effectively improve the security and efficiency of data collection.