Building management system with blockchain ledger
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Solution Overview
Problem
Building management systems lack a robust and secure method to track and validate changes across distributed devices, leading to potential security breaches and inefficiencies in automation and access control.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a distributed ledger architecture, such as a blockchain, to validate and record transactions from building management devices, ensuring authorized access and secure data storage through a validation network with consensus criteria.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a distributed ledger architecture is implemented to track and validate changes, then security and reliability are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the building management functionality into distributed devices, each capable of independent operation and validation. The ledger is divided into blocks that are distributed across multiple nodes, with each node maintaining a copy and validating transactions independently. This segmentation enables the system to achieve high security and reliability without requiring a single complex centralized system.
Solution Approach 2:
The distributed ledger acts as an intermediary layer between distributed devices, providing a secure and transparent mechanism for tracking and validating changes. Rather than devices directly communicating and trusting each other, they interact through the ledger which mediates validation and consensus, simplifying the overall system architecture while enhancing security.
2Extent of automation
If distributed devices generate and broadcast transactions to validation network, then automation capability is improved, but loss of time increases due to validation process
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary validation actions by having each node pre-validate transactions before adding them to the ledger. Consensus criteria are established in advance, allowing nodes to quickly verify transactions against pre-defined rules rather than requiring complex real-time negotiation. This preliminary validation reduces the time penalty associated with distributed consensus.
Solution Approach 2:
The validation network operates continuously with nodes constantly monitoring, validating, and updating the ledger. Rather than batch processing validations, the system maintains continuous validation activity, ensuring that automation flows smoothly with minimal interruptions. This continuous operation reduces the effective validation time by keeping the system in a constant state of readiness.
3Reliability
If blockchain is used to create immutable log of transactions, then data integrity is improved, but device complexity and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses cryptographic hash functions that are computationally efficient and can be performed with minimal energy expenditure. Each block contains a hash of the previous block, creating an immutable chain without requiring energy-intensive operations. This approach achieves data integrity using relatively cheap and efficient cryptographic operations rather than energy-consuming consensus mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
A distributed transaction ledger (e.g. a blockchain) is used to track and validate changes in a building management system such as a building automation system, access control system, or security/surveillance system. The building management system 100 includes a series of distributed devices connected to a peer-to-peer validation network. The distributed devices generate transaction information during normal operation and broadcast the transaction information to the validation network. The validation network maintains a distributed transaction ledger for the building management system, for example, by validating the transaction information and distributing the transaction information across the validation network according to consensus criteria to be stored locally in multiple instances by nodes of the validation network, which can be dedicated computing devices and/or validator distributed devices. The distributed devices perform building management functions based on validated transaction information retrieved from the transaction ledger.