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Vol. 8,  No. 12, 2021

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SPECIAL ISSUE ON BLOCKCHAIN FOR INTERNET-OF-THINGS AND CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS
Guest Editorial for Special Issue on Blockchain for Internet-of-Things and Cyber-Physical Systems
Mohammad Mehedi Hassan, Giancarlo Fortino, Laurence T. Yang, Hai Jiang, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Jun Jason Zhang, Fei-Yue Wang
2021, 8(12): 1867-1867. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004219
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DRRS-BC: Decentralized Routing Registration System Based on Blockchain
Huimin Lu, Yu Tang, Yi Sun
2021, 8(12): 1868-1876. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004204
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The border gateway protocol (BGP) has become the indispensible infrastructure of the Internet as a typical inter-domain routing protocol. However, it is vulnerable to misconfigurations and malicious attacks since BGP does not provide enough authentication mechanism to the route advertisement. As a result, it has brought about many security incidents with huge economic losses. Exiting solutions to the routing security problem such as S-BGP, So-BGP, Ps-BGP, and RPKI, are based on the Public Key Infrastructure and face a high security risk from the centralized structure. In this paper, we propose the decentralized blockchain-based route registration framework-decentralized route registration system based on blockchain (DRRS-BC). In DRRS-BC, we produce a global transaction ledge by the information of address prefixes and autonomous system numbers between multiple organizations and ASs, which is maintained by all blockchain nodes and further used for authentication. By applying blockchain, DRRS-BC perfectly solves the problems of identity authentication, behavior authentication as well as the promotion and deployment problem rather than depending on the authentication center. Moreover, it resists to prefix and subprefix hijacking attacks and meets the performance and security requirements of route registration.
Blockchain-Assisted Secure Fine-Grained Searchable Encryption for a Cloud-Based Healthcare Cyber-Physical System
Mamta, Brij B. Gupta, Kuan-Ching Li, Victor C. M. Leung, Kostas E. Psannis, Shingo Yamaguchi
2021, 8(12): 1877-1890. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004003
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The concept of sharing of personal health data over cloud storage in a healthcare-cyber physical system has become popular in recent times as it improves access quality. The privacy of health data can only be preserved by keeping it in an encrypted form, but it affects usability and flexibility in terms of effective search. Attribute-based searchable encryption (ABSE) has proven its worth by providing fine-grained searching capabilities in the shared cloud storage. However, it is not practical to apply this scheme to the devices with limited resources and storage capacity because a typical ABSE involves serious computations. In a healthcare cloud-based cyber-physical system (CCPS), the data is often collected by resource-constraint devices; therefore, here also, we cannot directly apply ABSE schemes. In the proposed work, the inherent computational cost of the ABSE scheme is managed by executing the computationally intensive tasks of a typical ABSE scheme on the blockchain network. Thus, it makes the proposed scheme suitable for online storage and retrieval of personal health data in a typical CCPS. With the assistance of blockchain technology, the proposed scheme offers two main benefits. First, it is free from a trusted authority, which makes it genuinely decentralized and free from a single point of failure. Second, it is computationally efficient because the computational load is now distributed among the consensus nodes in the blockchain network. Specifically, the task of initializing the system, which is considered the most computationally intensive, and the task of partial search token generation, which is considered as the most frequent operation, is now the responsibility of the consensus nodes. This eliminates the need of the trusted authority and reduces the burden of data users, respectively. Further, in comparison to existing decentralized fine-grained searchable encryption schemes, the proposed scheme has achieved a significant reduction in storage and computational cost for the secret key associated with users. It has been verified both theoretically and practically in the performance analysis section.
Multi-Candidate Voting Model Based on Blockchain
Dongliang Xu, Wei Shi, Wensheng Zhai, Zhihong Tian
2021, 8(12): 1891-1900. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004207
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Electronic voting has partially solved the problems of poor anonymity and low efficiency associated with traditional voting. However, the difficulties it introduces into the supervision of the vote counting, as well as its need for a concurrent guaranteed trusted third party, should not be overlooked. With the advent of blockchain technology in recent years, its features such as decentralization, anonymity, and non-tampering have made it a good candidate in solving the problems that electronic voting faces. In this study, we propose a multi-candidate voting model based on the blockchain technology. With the introduction of an asymmetric encryption and an anonymity-preserving voting algorithm, votes can be counted without relying on a third party, and the voting results can be displayed in real time in a manner that satisfies various levels of voting security and privacy requirements. Experimental results show that the proposed model solves the aforementioned problems of electronic voting without significant negative impact from an increasing number of voters or candidates.
Elastic Smart Contracts in Blockchains
Schahram Dustdar, Pablo Fernández, José María García, Antonio Ruiz-Cortés
2021, 8(12): 1901-1912. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004222
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In this paper, we deal with questions related to blockchains in complex Internet of Things (IoT)-based ecosystems. Such ecosystems are typically composed of IoT devices, edge devices, cloud computing software services, as well as people, who are decision makers in scenarios such as smart cities. Many decisions related to analytics can be based on data coming from IoT sensors, software services, and people. However, they are typically based on different levels of abstraction and granularity. This poses a number of challenges when multiple blockchains are used together with smart contracts. This work proposes to apply our concept of elasticity to smart contracts and thereby enabling analytics in and between multiple blockchains in the context of IoT. We propose a reference architecture for Elastic Smart Contracts and evaluate the approach in a smart city scenario, discussing the benefits in terms of performance and self-adaptability of our solution.
Blockchain-Based Secured IPFS-Enable Event Storage Technique With Authentication Protocol in VANET
Sanjeev Kumar Dwivedi, Ruhul Amin, Satyanarayana Vollala
2021, 8(12): 1913-1922. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004225
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In recent decades, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have improved drivers’ safety and have shared information (such as traffic congestion and accidents) in a very efficient way. However, the privacy of vehicles and the security of event information is a major concern. The problem of secure sharing of event information without compromising the trusted third party (TTP) and data storage is the main issue in ITS. Blockchain technologies can resolve this problem. A work has been published on blockchain-based protocol for secure sharing of events and authentication of vehicles. This protocol addresses the issue of the safe storing of event information. However, authentication of vehicles solely depends on the cloud server. As a result, their scheme utilizes the notion of partially decentralized architecture. This paper proposes a novel decentralized architecture for the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) without the cloud server. This work also presents a protocol for securing event information and vehicle authentication using the blockchain mechanism. In this protocol, the registered user accesses the event information securely from the interplanetary file system (IPFS). We incorporate the IPFS, along with blockchain, to store the information in a fully distributed manner. The proposed protocol is compared with the state-of-the-art. The comparison provides desirable security at a reasonable cost. The evaluation of the proposed smart contract in terms of cost (GAS) is also discussed.
PAPERS
Adaptive Fuzzy Backstepping Tracking Control for Flexible Robotic Manipulator
Wanmin Chang, Yongming Li, Shaocheng Tong
2021, 8(12): 1923-1930. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2017.7510886
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In this paper, an adaptive fuzzy state feedback control method is proposed for the single-link robotic manipulator system. The considered system contains unknown nonlinear function and actuator saturation. Fuzzy logic systems (FLSs) and a smooth function are used to approximate the unknown nonlinearities and the actuator saturation, respectively. By combining the command-filter technique with the backstepping design algorithm, a novel adaptive fuzzy tracking backstepping control method is developed. It is proved that the adaptive fuzzy control scheme can guarantee that all the variables in the closed-loop system are bounded, and the system output can track the given reference signal as close as possible. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
An Optimal Control Strategy for Multi-UAVs Target Tracking and Cooperative Competition
Yiguo Yang, Liefa Liao, Hong Yang, Shuai Li
2021, 8(12): 1931-1947. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003012
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An optimal control strategy of winner-take-all (WTA) model is proposed for target tracking and cooperative competition of multi-UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). In this model, firstly, based on the artificial potential field method, the artificial potential field function is improved and the fuzzy control decision is designed to realize the trajectory tracking of dynamic targets. Secondly, according to the finite-time convergence high-order differentiator, a double closed-loop UAV speed tracking the controller is designed to realize the speed control and tracking of the target tracking trajectory. Numerical simulation results show that the designed speed tracking controller has the advantages of fast tracking, high precision, strong stability and avoiding chattering. Finally, a cooperative competition scheme of multiple UAVs based on WTA is designed to find the minimum control energy from multiple UAVs and realize the optimal control strategy. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation results show that the model has the fast convergence, high control accuracy, strong stability and good robustness.
Energy Control of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles Using Model Predictive Control With Route Preview
Yang Zhao, Yanguang Cai, Qiwen Song
2021, 8(12): 1948-1955. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2017.7510889
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The paper proposes an adoption of slope, elevation, speed and route distance preview to achieve optimal energy management of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The approach is to identify route features from historical and real-time traffic data, in which information fusion model and traffic prediction model are used to improve the information accuracy. Then, dynamic programming combined with equivalent consumption minimization strategy is used to compute an optimal solution for real-time energy management. The solution is the reference for PHEV energy management control along the route. To improve the system's ability of handling changing situation, the study further explores predictive control model in the real-time control of the energy. A simulation is performed to model PHEV under above energy control strategy with route preview. The results show that the average fuel consumption of PHEV along the previewed route with model predictive control (MPC) strategy can be reduced compared with optimal strategy and base control strategy.
Exact Controllability and Exact Observability of Descriptor Infinite Dimensional Systems
Zhaoqiang Ge
2021, 8(12): 1956-1963. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003411
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Necessary and sufficient conditions for the exact controllability and exact observability of a descriptor infinite dimensional system are obtained in the sense of distributional solution. These general results are used to examine the exact controllability and exact observability of the Dzektser equation in the theory of seepage and the exact controllability of wave equation.
Toward Coordination Control of Multiple Fish-Like Robots: Real-Time Vision-Based Pose Estimation and Tracking via Deep Neural Networks
Tianhao Zhang, Jiuhong Xiao, Liang Li, Chen Wang, Guangming Xie
2021, 8(12): 1964-1976. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2021.1004228
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Controlling multiple multi-joint fish-like robots has long captivated the attention of engineers and biologists, for which a fundamental but challenging topic is to robustly track the postures of the individuals in real time. This requires detecting multiple robots, estimating multi-joint postures, and tracking identities, as well as processing fast in real time. To the best of our knowledge, this challenge has not been tackled in the previous studies. In this paper, to precisely track the planar postures of multiple swimming multi-joint fish-like robots in real time, we propose a novel deep neural network-based method, named TAB-IOL. Its TAB part fuses the top-down and bottom-up approaches for vision-based pose estimation, while the IOL part with long short-term memory considers the motion constraints among joints for precise pose tracking. The satisfying performance of our TAB-IOL is verified by testing on a group of freely swimming fish-like robots in various scenarios with strong disturbances and by a deed comparison of accuracy, speed, and robustness with most state-of-the-art algorithms. Further, based on the precise pose estimation and tracking realized by our TAB-IOL, several formation control experiments are conducted for the group of fish-like robots. The results clearly demonstrate that our TAB-IOL lays a solid foundation for the coordination control of multiple fish-like robots in a real working environment. We believe our proposed method will facilitate the growth and development of related fields.