A Special Issue of Journal of Network and Computer Applications on

“The Convergence of Intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT and Blockchain): Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions”

Digital revolution is characterized by the convergence of technologies—from cloud computing to artificial intelligence, big data, DLT and IoT—that is blurring the lines between physical and digital worlds. Although the IoT and DLT, of which blockchain is a popular example, are two very different technologies, the fusion of DLT and IoT technologies is an unprecedented paradigm shift that is expected to disrupt both current and future systems in various fields. In particular, DLT has exactly what is needed to fix the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of IoT, in particular in terms of security. Although the convergence of IoT and DLT can potentially tackle major shortcomings of today’s solutions, its adoption is still in its infancy phase, suffering from various issues, including lack of scalability, consensus algorithms, data privacy, efficiency, availability, storage, interoperability, standardization, as well as the lack of consensus towards any reference models or best practices that specify how DLT should be utilized in IoT, among others. This special issue aims to bring together researchers and experts in order to foster the investigations on cutting-edge IoT-DLT solutions and allowing one to contribute to advancing the convergence of DLT and IoT. Authors are invited to submit high-quality papers containing original work from either academia or industry reporting novel advances in (but not limited to) the following topics:

• The recent development in DLTs | Architectures/platforms for DLT and IoT
• Applications of DLT and Blockchain in edge, fog and cloud computing
• Development of DLT-IoT enabled sensor networks
• DLTs and Blockchain in peer-to-peer and M2M communications
• DTLs and Blockchain in embedded and real-time systems
• Provisioning of sensor-enabled blockchain-IoT architecture
• DLT-based IoT security and privacy solutions, key management, identity management, authentication, authorization, and access control
• System design and implementation methods for blockchain-based IoT systems
• Performance evaluation and experimental analysis of DLT/blockchain IoT schemes
• Novel development of smart contracts in the blockchain-IoT ecosystem
• Deployment of IoT-based sensor-data management
• Machine Learning Approaches for Convergence of IoT and DLT
• Performance evaluation and experimental analysis of Blockchain IoT schemes
• Case studies (e.g., healthcare, energy, smart home, smart building, smart city, Industry 4.0, finance, transportation and logistics)

Submission Format and Guideline

All submitted papers must be clearly written in excellent English and contain only original work, which has not been published by or is currently under review for any other journal or conference. A detailed submission guideline is available as “Guide to Authors” at https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-network-and-computer-applications/1084-8045/guide-for-authors

All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted through Elsevier Editorial System (EES). The authors must select as “SI – IoT-DLT” when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process. The EES website is located at: http://ees.elsevier.com/jnca/

Requests for additional information should be addressed to the guest editors (Farshad.firouzi@duke.edu).