Special Issue on Blockchain-Enabled Technologies for Cyber-Physical Systems and Big Data Applications

Cyber-Physical System (CPS) refers to the seamless integration of physical processes, computational components, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices such as sensors, actuators, and so on. Examples of CPS include smart grid, autonomous transportation systems, medical monitoring, process control systems, robotic systems and automatic pilot avionics. It connects billions of devices, intelligent and autonomous machines, industrial equipment, etc., to generate an unprecedented volume of industrial data, which gives birth to big data. Handling this massive amount of data in an effective, secure and economical manner has become problematic. Furthermore, CPSs are often associated with sensitive data. Its centralised infrastructure exposes it to vulnerability, data breach, and denial of services. As a result, decentralised CPS infrastructures become a potential solution. In particular, it is essential to explore new big data processing techniques with decentralised CPS infrastructures.

As a revolutionary technology, blockchain combines distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanisms, and encryption algorithms to record data and transactions efficiently. These benefits make blockchain a promising technique to revolutionise increasingly centralised CPSs for constructions and applications, and reshape traditional data mining and knowledge discovery technologies. However, employing blockchain techniques in big data-driven CPS applications still has some technical challenges and limitations. To address these issues and opportunities, this special issue invites original research that investigates blockchain-enabled technology for CPSs and big data applications.

Topics Covered

These include, but not limited to:

• Advancement of blockchain in cyber-physical systems
• Big data algorithms, tools, applications and services using blockchain
• Blockchain-based lightweight data structure for IoT data
• Blockchain data management
• Data mining and knowledge discovery on blockchain
• Information retrieval on blockchain
• Security, privacy and trust on blockchain
• Transaction management on blockchain
• Data driven applications enabled by blockchain
• Blockchain in cloud/edge/fog computing
• Performance optimisation for blockchain-enabled big data applications
• Other blockchain implementations for CPSs and big data applications
• Architecture for convergence of blockchain and CPSs
• Scalability of blockchain in CPS systems

Deadlines

• Paper Submission: 1 December 2020
• First-Round Review Notification: 1 March 2021
• Notification of Acceptance: 1 May 2021
• Camera Ready Submission: 1 June 2021
• Tentative Publication: August-October 2021

Submission Instructions

Only original and unpublished research papers will be considered for this special issue. Authors should follow the DCN manuscript format described in the guide for authors. Submissions should be made online; please select the article type SI: BlockTech-CPS&BigData.

Guest Editors

• Prof. Zheng Yan, Xidian University, China, and Aalto University, Finland. Email: zyan@xidian.edu.cn
• Prof. Qinghua Zheng, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. Email: qhzheng@xjtu.edu.cn
• Dr. Yulei Wu, University of Exeter, UK. Email: y.l.wu@exeter.ac.uk
• Prof. Yaliang Zhao, Henan University, China & St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. Email: ylzhao@stfx.ca
• Prof. Mohammed Atiquzzaman, University of Oklahoma, USA. Email: atiq@ou.edu

For any queries, contact Prof. Zheng Yan, Email: zyan@xidian.edu.cn.