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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has great potential in diverse real-time mission-critical applications and one such application is telesurgery or robotic surgery. However, some issues like security, throughput, reliability, trust, and transparency are still challenging in an AI-enabled telesurgery system. Motivated from these challenges, in this paper, we propose a blockchain and AI-empowered telesurgery system towards 6G called BATS, which is a self-manageable, secure, transparent, and trustable system with massive Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (mURLLC). BATS uses AI algorithms such as eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) to classify the disease with their criticality score ranging from 0 to 1. Moreover, BATS uses UAVs to transport light-weight healthcare items such as medicines and surgical tools in an emergent situation (during surgical procedures) to avoid the road-traffic congestions.Results show that BATS achieves better prediction accuracy, high throughput when the number of users increases, extremely low packet loss ratio, low storage cost, high mining profit, and low bandwidth consumption by nterPlanetary File System (IPFS) compared to the traditional schemes.

The COVID-19 pandemic situation has proved to be disastrous for humanity throughout the world. However, during this period, people must take precautions for safety purposes. One of the essential steps towards eliminating or reducing the effect of COVID-19 is maintaining social distancing while in public places. Some people are neglecting the social distancing norms while on the move. Still, no surveillance system exists, which monitors the people’s movement for social distancing and securely & efficiently shares the information with the concerned administration department. There also exists no penalty system which forces the people to ensure social distancing. Motivated from the aforementioned facts, in this paper, we present a blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI)-envisioned scheme for monitoring social distancing to combat COVID-19 situations. The proposed scheme uses fast region-based convolutional neural networks (RCNN) and you only look once (YOLO) models for the object (i.e., human) detection through the live video feed captured from the static CCTV cameras as well as lens-equipped drones. Further, the efficient euclidean distance calculation is embedded for calculating the distance between two humans. Blockchain technology ensures the secure and trusted exchange of information between the entities at the physical layer and the administration departments. Blockchain wallets are also used to pay the fine when people do not follow social distance norms. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated based on three broad parameters such as (i) human detection and violation identification, (ii) blockchain simulation and analysis, and (iii) network performance comparison. The parameters considered for (i) is confidence score, for (ii) are scalability, hash rate, and simulation interface, and for (iii) are network bandwidth, throughput, packet loss rate, and network latency. By analyzing all the parameters mentioned above, we observe the proposed scheme outperforms the traditional approaches.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the lives of millions of people worldwide. With an alarming increase in COVID-19 cases, it is important to detect and diagnose COVID-19 in its early stages to prevent its spread. To diagnose remote patients, the Internet can be useful for accessing data of that patient. But, the Internet has also had issues related to data security, reliability, and privacy. Motivated by these challenges, in this paper, we propose a Blockchain (BC) based COVID-19 detection scheme (BCovX) for fast and reliable diagnosis of COVID-19 using chest X-Ray (CXR) images. For fast and accurate detection of COVID-19 using CXR, BCovX consists of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model, using which a patient can be diagnosed for COVID-19 remotely. CNNs have performed successfully in medical imaging classification. BCovX provides reliable and secure data access and exchange using BC and smart contracts (SC). To solve issues related to data storage and its associated cost, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol is used to store medical data. We also present a real-time SC developed in Solidity to govern the transaction between the patient and the doctor. The SC has been compiled and deployed on Remix Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Finally, we have evaluated the performance of BCovX with traditional schemes in terms of storage cost, bandwidth requirements, and accuracy of the CNN model.

Financial institutions have made lives easier for a lot of individuals and organizations that would earlier use to face capital shortage now and then. Therefore, it becomes necessary to make the financial systems more reliable, secure, time-conserving, and cost-effective. Although several approaches have already been proposed, all of these tend to fail on at least one of the key features, i.e., trust. Motivated by this, in this paper, we propose DeLend, an Ethereum blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending system. In DeLend, the problems of security, trust, and reliability have been solved with the help of Ethereum-based smart contracts (SCs). To make the system middlemen-free and much more cost-effective, we use the interplanetary file system (IPFS) protocol as a data storage. Through extensive simulation, we show that DeLend requires less bandwidth, which makes it a suitable enabling technology for the next generation of cellular networks, i.e. 6G. Finally, DeLend’s performance evaluation demonstrates its efficacy compared to traditional lending schemes.

Blockchain technology has emerged to provide immense security solutions and create trust between the stakeholders. In a multi-application scenario, fair resource allocation is complex and challenging. Various Resource Allocation Schemes (RAS) have been proposed by the researchers across the globe, but these solutions are not sufficient to handle the security, trust, latency, and bandwidth issues in the network, which introduces vulnerabilities in the system. Motivated from the aforementioned issues, this paper proposes Block-RAS, a blockchain-based RAS to manage the demand-supply of resources between the users and resource providing companies (RPC) in a secured and trusted environment. Block-RAS provides a highly reliable, low-latency, and bandwidth optimum communication between users and RPC with embedded 6G network infrastructure. In Block-RAS, the security, trust, and transparency are achieved using ethereum blockchain, whereas the cost-effective and optimum bandwidth utilization is achieved using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). Finally, the performance evaluation of Block-RAS is done by a comparative analysis of the proposed approach with traditional approaches that are dependent on centralized 5G based schemes where the Block-RAS outperforms in terms of delay, packet-loss, blockchain block-size, scalability, and network bandwidth utilization.

Online teaching has become mandatory across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic situations. Hence, there is a need to uplift the online teaching technology for data privacy preservation and transparency in the system. Various online teaching schemes have been proposed by various authors, but they lack in handling decentralised governance, transparency, trust and communication issues. Blockchain (BC) Technology has emerged to provide decentralised solution in solving the real-time problems. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we propose a BC-based decentralised online teaching scheme known as BDoTs. The security and data privacy issues in BDoTs are resolved by developing smart contracts (SCs) over BC. Moreover, the data storage cost issues are handled by the Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) protocol for Off-Chain data storage. Moreover, we present a real-time BC simulation and deployment of SC in Truffle suite. Results show that the proposed scheme performs better in comparison to the state-of-the-art schemes in terms of scalability, data storage cost, and packet loss.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is used in various smart applications, such as defense, civilian, and healthcare services. As data in these applications flow through an open channel, i.e., the Internet, so security and privacy always a challenging issue. Though many solutions exist for this problem in literature, but these solutions are not adequate to handle security, privacy, latency, and efficient real-time delivery of healthcare services remotely over the wireless communication channel. Moreover, the existing UAV systems have security, reliability, latency, and storage cost issues, which restricts their applicability shortly. Motivated from these facts, this paper proposes VAHAK, an Ethereum Blockchain (BC) based secure outdoor healthcare medical supplies using UAVs. VAHAK provides reliable communication between the UAVs and the entities in a decentralized manner, which ensures the early delivery of required medical supplies to the critical patients. In VAHAK, security, privacy, and reliability issues have been resolved using Ethereum smart contract (ESC), while storage cost issues are handled with IPFS protocol. The security vulnerabilities of the VAHAK are tested on MyThril open-source tool. VAHAK is efficient in terms of data storage cost as it uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for healthcare record storage and 5G-enabled Tactile Internet (TI) for communication, respectively. Finally, VAHAK performance evaluation demonstrates its effectiveness as compared to the traditional systems where it outperforms the existing schemes with respect to various performance evaluation metrics, such as scalability, latency, and network bandwidth.

A smart grid (SG) system offers many services to the end-users, such as load management, load forecasting, and energy trading (ET). As data among different devices in SG environment flows through an open channel, i.e., Internet, so, security and privacy always remains a challenging issue. Though many solutions exist for this problem in literature but these solutions are not adequate to handle security, privacy, latency, real-time settlement of ET. Moreover, most of the solutions reported in the literature are based upon the centralized architecture having single point of failure. Motivated from these facts, this paper proposes a scheme ET-DeaL, which is a Smart Contract-based Secure Energy Trading scheme for SG system for peer-to-peer (P2P) ET. ET-DeaL uses Ethereum smart contract (ESC) and Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) for the P2P ET management. Moreover, it manages the energy load of residential houses, industries, and electric vehicles (EVs). In ET-DeaL, security and privacy issues have been resolved using ESC, while storage cost issues are handled with IPFS protocol. We implemented a real time ESC and deploy it in Truffle suite. The security bugs of the ET-DeaL are tested on MyThril open-source tool. Finally, ET-DeaL performance evaluation demonstrates its effectiveness as compared to the traditional systems where it outperforms the existing schemes with respect to various performance evaluation metrics.

Telesurgery (TS) with 5G-enabled Tactile Internet (TI) has enormous potential to deliver real-time ultra-responsive surgical services remotely with high quality and accuracy. It is quite beneficial for society in the prospect of highly precise surgical diagnosis. However, the existing TS systems have security, privacy, latency, and blockchain (BC) storage cost issues, which restricts its applicability in surgical procedures across the world in the near future. To mitigate the above-mentioned issues, in this paper, we propose an approach named AaYusH (Ethereum smart contract (ESC) and IPFS-based TS system). The security and privacy issues in AaYusH can be resolved through ESC, whereas storage cost issues with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol. Moreover, we present a real-time SC written in Solidity and deployed in Truffle suite. We test the security bugs of AaYusH in MyThril open-source tool and detect no issues. Finally, we evaluate the performance of AaYusH in context to latency and data storage cost, and it outperforms as compared to the traditional telesurgery system.

Smart contracts are essential in maintaining the trust between the members of the blockchain. Its verification is of utmost importance, as it is unmodifiable once deployed. Moreover, a malicious user can deploy vulnerable smart contracts to breach the blockchain data. To restrict this, we propose a deep learning-based scheme to detect the vulnerabilities and rate them as safe/vulnerable based on probability value 0 . 5 / ≥ 0 . 5 respectively. An open Google BigQuery dataset with 7000 samples was used to train the classifier. We train artificial neural networks (ANN), long-short term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit models (GRU) and compare their accuracy, precision, recall, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve values. Results show the LSTM model outperforms ANN and GRU. Then, we simulate the LSTM to classify the smart contracts before their deployment in the blockchain. Also, the efficacy of the blockchain is justified with the proposed system’s data storage cost and scalability.

Industry 4.0-based oil and gas supply-chain (OaG-SC) industry automates and efficiently executes most of the processes by using cloud computing (CC), artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), and industrial Internet of things (IIoT). However, managing various operations in OaG-SC industries is a challenging task due to the involvement of various stakeholders. It includes landowners, Oil and Gas (OaG) company operators, surveyors, local and national level government bodies, financial institutions, and insurance institutions. During mining, OaG company needs to pay incentives as a royalty to the landowners. In the traditional existing schemes, the process of royalty transaction is performed between the OaG company and landowners as per the contract between them before the start of the actual mining process. These contracts can be manipulated by attackers (insiders or outsiders) for their advantages, creating an unreliable and un-trusted royalty transaction. It may increase disputes between both parties. Hence, a reliable, cost-effective, trusted, secure, and tamper-resistant scheme is required to execute royalty contract transactions in the OaG industry. Motivated from these research gaps, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based scheme, which securely executes the royalty transactions among various stakeholders in OaG industries. We evaluated the performance of the proposed scheme and the smart contracts’ functionalities and compared it with the existing state-of-the-art schemes using various parameters. The results obtained illustrate the superiority of the proposed scheme compared to the existing schemes in the literature.

Regular up-gradation in the standards of the wireless networks and to sustain in the market with the best services, are the key challenges to the services providers of the telecommunication industries. Traditional mobile number portability system (TMNPS) is based on the manual process, in which existing service provider and the new service provider have to undergo certain transfers once a porting request is generated by the user. Slow processing of request, lack of transparency among the entities involved, and delay during the verification are the major challenges in the TMNPS. Moreover, a third-party is required to ensure the security of the stored and regulated data. Motivated from these facts, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based mobile number portability scheme, which uses an Ethereum blockchain technology and call routing mechanism to handle the request of the user. The secured royalty contract transactions and secure call routing mechanism are the potential part of the proposed scheme. We then evaluated the performance of the proposed scheme and functionalities of the proposed smart contracts (SCs) using experimental setup with respect to various parameters. Results show that the transition time taken by the proposed scheme is only 4 seconds for 200 blocks and TMNPS took 6 seconds to execute the 200 blocks.