The paper “Towards a Secure and Scalable Maritime Monitoring System Using Blockchain and Low-Cost IoT Technology”, co-authored by Alan Oliveira (LASIGE integrated researcher) has been published in the Sensors Journal, a top-ranked journal (h5-index 145 and ranked #4 in the Google Scholar Engineering & Computer Science – subcategory: general). The paper’s co-authors are Warlley Freire and Vinicius Nascimento, from the Brazilian Navy, and Wilson Melo Jr. and Paulo Nascimento from the National Institute of Metrology, Quality, and Technology, Brazil.

A Maritime Monitoring System (MMS) aims to leverage active surveillance of military and non-military activities at sea using sensing devices such as radars, optronics, Automatic Identification Systems (AISs), and IoT, among others. However, deploying a nation-scale MMS imposes great challenges regarding the scalability and cybersecurity of this heterogeneous system. Aiming to address these challenges, the published paper explores the use of blockchain to leverage MMS cybersecurity and ensure the integrity, authenticity, and availability of relevant navigation data. It proposes a prototype built on a permissioned blockchain solution using HyperLedger Fabric. The paper evaluates the systems’ performance through a practical experiment where the prototype receives sensing data from a Software-Defined-Radio (SDR)-based low-cost AIS receiver built with a Raspberry Pi. Furthermore, it determines, through extensive experimentation, the client’s optimal hardware configuration. The performance results provide a quantitative analysis of the blockchain technology overhead and its impact in terms of Quality of Service (QoS), demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the solution in the scope of an MMS using AIS data.

The paper is available here.