Enhancing Logistics With the Internet of Things: A Secured and Efficient Distribution and Storage Model Utilizing Blockchain Innovations and Interplanetary File System

Logistics transports, stores, and delivers goods from the producer to the final user. Logistics have become increasingly complex in today's globalized world, making it imperative to address data integrity, transparency, and secure storage challenges. IoT devices in logistics allow for real-time monitoring of goods, vehicles, and environmental conditions. However, this generates vast amounts of data, necessitating a reliable and secure data storage and management system. These issues above can be addressed by deploying a blockchain-based solution. Blockchain is an innovative technology that operates on a decentralized database system, and it has different applications, which include finance, healthcare, and so on. This research proposed a blockchain- IoT-based Model for enhancing the logistics process. The proposed model utilized the Interplanetary file system to secure and efficiently store logistics data on a distributed and decentralized network and the SHA-256 hashing algorithm to ensure users' private information anonymity. The model also establishes rules by using smart contracts, which increases efficiency. The performance evaluation of the proposed model was done based on the security transactions, latency, cost, and throughput. The experimental results and performance evaluation show that the proposed model is more efficient and secure than the existing blockchain-based systems. Additionally, the proposed model offers the real-time monitoring of goods while in transit. The proposed model solves the IoT logistics system's Security, storage, and interoperability challenges. It also provides recommendations for logistics stakeholders to adopt blockchain technology. Despite the implications, the limitation of this study is that it was tested in a controlled environment.