Trust in Edge-based Internet of Things Architectures: State of the Art and Research Challenges

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims to enable a scenario where smart objects, inserted into information networks, supply smart services for human beings. The introduction of edge computing in IoT can reduce the decision-making latency, save bandwidth resources, and expand the cloud services to be allocated at the network’s edge. However, edge-based IoT systems currently face challenges in their decentralized trust management. Trust management is essential to obtain reliable mining and data fusion, improved user privacy and data security, and provisioning of services with context-awareness. In this survey, we first examine the edge-based IoT architectures currently reported in the literature. Then a complete review of trust requirements in edge-based IoT systems is produced. Also, we discuss about blockchain as a solution to solve several trust problems in IoT and analyze in detail the correlation between blockchain and edge computing. Finally, we provide a detailed analysis of performance aspects of trusted edge-based IoT systems and recommend promising research directions.