Design of a Blockchain-enabled gateway for IoT

During the last years, the interest around the Blockchain concept has grown faster and, as a consequence, several studies about the possibility of exploiting such technology in different application domains have been conducted. As a result, most of them highlighted the benefits that its use could bring in those context where the integrity and the authenticity of the data are important, e.g. for reasons linked to regulations about consumer's healthcare. In such cases it would be important to collect data in real-time through sensors and then store them in the blockchain, so that they can become immutable and tamper-proof. The thesis project aimed to the design and development of a software framework that allows Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to interact directly with an Ethereum-based blockchain. The project has been carried forward in collaboration with the Food-Chain S.P.A. company, which operates in the field of food-tracebility through a blockchain-based mechanism. The company cooperates with the Quadrans Foundation which has powered its own Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based on the Ethereum Blockchain. The designed system has been integrated in a use case for temperature monitoring of fish products within a warehouse. Gathered monitoring data have been stored in a tamper-proof DLT. These data have been made accessible to the final consumer or to some certification authority, which can ensure that the temperature parameters imposed by the law have been satisfied. The obtained result demostrates one of the many possible use of DLTs in the IoT domain.