Call for Papers

A Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed ledger with a chain network of blocks recording historical transactions. A transaction is a record of action. A transaction inside the block will be of: sensing/saving data, assembling parts, depositing money, processing a business deal, ordering/delivering a product part, notarizing paperwork, and so on. Blockchains are categorized into two types: public blockchain and private blockchain. Private blockchains have received more attention from industry recently because they are much faster, cheaper, and privacy-oriented compared to public blockchains.

Public blockchains are literally “public.” Anyone can read, write, and join a public chain network, while private blockchains are permissioned and one or multiple nodes control and restrict access of members to the chain network. The openness of public blockchains is a disadvantage. Some well-known examples of public blockchains are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, while two well-known examples of private blockchains are Hyperledger Fabric and R3 Corda. Public blockchains consume a tremendous amount of energy, time and money because of the mining to achieve consensus. On the other hand, the consensus algorithm of private blockchains is simple, which provides the advantages of much faster computing time, cheaper cost, and greater scalability. Private and public blockchains have few similarities and consequently private blockchains are totally opposite from public blockchains. Private blockchains have been successfully applied in industrial Internet of Things (IoT) because of their advantages and industrial characteristics. Most industrial IoT organizations are exclusive and private (i.e., less public) as well as money-oriented and time-oriented, and thus private blockchains are well fitted to industrial IoT.

However, private blockchains have many challenging technological problems for various industrial IoT applications which we should attack, for example, scalability, efficient consensus mechanisms, robust smart contracts, secure access control, replica management, compatibility with public blockchains, and more. This Feature Topic (FT) solicits original research contributions in the following topics, but not limited to:

• Lighter and faster consensus mechanisms of private blockchains for industrial IoT
• Private blockchain-based secure access control for industrial IoT
• AI/deep learning for smart contract and DApp of private blockchains for industrial IoT
• Deployment and feasibility study of private blockchains for industrial IoT in emerging networks such as VANET, edge/fog computing, and software-defined networking
• Private blockchain use-case scenarios for industrial IoT
• Robust smart contract and DApp of private blockchains for industrial IoT
• Private blockchain use-case scenarios for industrial IoT
• Scalable and secured backbone network and protocol of private blockchains for industrial IoT
• Interoperability and compatibility between private and public blockchains
• Scalability of private blockchains for industrial IoT
• Private blockchain-based tracking system for industrial IoT
• Distributed/decentralized data store in private blockchains for industrial IoT
• Big data analysis for real-world private blockchain data for industrial IoT
• Private blockchain-based security system for industrial IoT

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the Paper Submission Guidelines.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select the “September 2020: Private Blockchain in Industrial IoT” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30 September 2019
Initial Decision Notification: 15 January 2020
Final Decision Notification: 31 May 2020
Publication Date: September 2020

Guest Editors

Minho Jo
Korea University at Sejong, S. Korea

Kai Hu
Beihang University, China

Richard Yu
Carleton University, Canada

Li Sun
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China

Mauro Conti
University of Padua, Italy

Qinghe Du
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China