Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Palazzo delle Scienze, Via Ospedale 72, 09124 Cagliari, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Oct 13;21(20):6814. doi: 10.3390/s21206814.
In recent decades, modern societies are experiencing an increasing adoption of interconnected smart devices. This revolution involves not only canonical devices such as smartphones and tablets, but also simple objects like light bulbs. Named the Internet of Things (IoT), this ever-growing scenario offers enormous opportunities in many areas of modern society, especially if joined by other emerging technologies such as, for example, the blockchain. Indeed, the latter allows users to certify transactions publicly, without relying on central authorities or intermediaries. This work aims to exploit the scenario above by proposing a novel blockchain-based distributed paradigm to secure localization services, here named the Internet of Entities (IoE). It represents a mechanism for the reliable localization of people and things, and it exploits the increasing number of existing wireless devices and blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies. Moreover, unlike most of the canonical localization approaches, it is strongly oriented towards the protection of the users' privacy. Finally, its implementation requires minimal efforts since it employs the existing infrastructures and devices, thus giving life to a new and wide data environment, exploitable in many domains, such as e-health, smart cities, and smart mobility.
近几十年来，现代社会越来越多地采用相互连接的智能设备。这场革命不仅涉及智能手机和平板电脑等典型设备，还涉及灯泡等简单物品。这个不断发展的场景被命名为物联网 (IoT)，它为现代社会的许多领域带来了巨大的机会，如果与其他新兴技术（例如区块链）结合使用，更是如此。实际上，后者允许用户在不依赖中央当局或中介机构的情况下公开验证交易。本工作旨在利用上述场景，通过提出一种新颖的基于区块链的分布式范例来保护本地化服务，这里将其命名为实体互联网 (IoE)。它代表了一种可靠定位人和物的机制，利用了越来越多的现有无线设备和基于区块链的分布式账本技术。此外，与大多数典型的定位方法不同，它非常注重保护用户的隐私。最后，它的实现需要付出最小的努力，因为它利用了现有的基础设施和设备，从而为许多领域（如电子健康、智慧城市和智能移动性）提供了一个新的广泛的数据环境。
