Exploring DAG-Based Architecture as an Alternative to Blockchain for Critical IoT Use Cases

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based architecture as an alternative to Blockchain technology for critical Internet of Things (IoT) use cases. The speed of transactions and the scalability of Blockchain technology are limitations for critical IoT applications such as vaccine cold chain monitoring. A pilot project has been developed to analyze the speed of the DAG architecture. It simulates monitoring the vaccine cold chain, recording temperatures and alarms. Using the same architecture, two cases with different IoT connectivity technologies in the pilot project are defined: LoRaWAN and Sigfox. The results of these two cases show the comparison between both technologies that show that the DAG architecture can provide the necessary time delays for critical IoT use cases. The main limitation found after the execution of the two cases of the pilot project is related to the need for worldwide coverage of the communications technologies used. For this reason, the study of communications through IoT satellites with global coverage is proposed as future work.