Research Area:  Blockchain Technology
The blockchain technology is taking the world by storm. Blockchain with its decentralized, transparent and secure nature has emerged as a disruptive technology for the next generation of numerous industrial applications. One of them is Cloud of Things enabled by the combination of cloud computing and Internet of Things. In this context, blockchain provides innovative solutions to address challenges in Cloud of Things in terms of decentralization, data privacy and network security, while Cloud of Things offer elasticity and scalability functionalities to improve the efficiency of blockchain operations. Therefore, a novel paradigm of blockchain and Cloud of Things integration, called BCoT, has been widely regarded as a promising enabler for a wide range of application scenarios. In this article, we present a state-of-the-art review on the BCoT integration to provide general readers with an overview of the BCoT in various aspects, including background knowledge, motivation, and integrated architecture. Particularly, we also provide an in-depth survey of BCoT applications in different use-case domains such as smart healthcare, smart city, smart transportation and smart industry. Then, we review the recent BCoT developments with the emerging blockchain and cloud platforms, services, and research projects. Finally, some important research challenges and future directions are highlighted to spur further research in this promising area.
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Author(s) Name:  Dinh C. Nguyen; Pubudu N. Pathirana; Ming Ding; Aruna Seneviratne
Journal name:  IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
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Publisher name:  IEEE
DOI:  10.1109/COMST.2020.3020092
Volume Information:  Volume: 22, Issue: 4, Fourthquarter 2020, Page(s): 2521 - 2549
Paper Link:   https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9179702