FEASIBILITY STUDY USING BLOCKCHAIN TO IMPLEMENT PROOF OF LOCATION
Creators: name: Lister-Gruesbeck, Kristina D.
Publisher: name: Purdue University Graduate School
Year: 2019
Subjects: System and network security

description: The purpose of this thesis is to determine the feasibility of using blockchain to implement proof of location. There has been an increasing demand for a way to create a validated proof of location that is economical, and easy to deploy as well as portable. There are several reasons for an increased demand in this technology including the ever-increasing number of mobile gamers that have been able to spoof their location successfully, the increasing number of on demand package shipments from companies such as Amazon, and the desire to reduce the occurrence of medical errors as well as holding hospitals accountable for their errors. Additional reasons that this technology is gaining popularity and increasing in demand is due the continually increasing number of lost baggage claims that airlines are receiving, as well as insurance companies desire to reduce the number of fraud cases that are related to high-value goods as well as increasing the probability of their recovery. Within the past year, there has been an extensive amount of research as well as work that has been completed to create an irrefutable method of location verification, which will permit a user to be able to create time-stamped documentation validating that they were at a particular location at a certain day and time. Additionally, the user is then permitted to release the information at a later date and time that is convenient for them. This research was completed using a Raspberry Pi 3B, a Raspberry Pi 3B+, two virtual Raspberry Pi’s as well as two virtual servers in which the goal was to download, and setup either Ethereum and/or Tendermint Blockchain on each piece of equipment. After completely synchronizing the blockchain it be used to store the verified location data that been time-stamped. There was a variety of issues that were encountered during the setup and installation of the blockchains on the equipment including overclocking processors, which negatively affected the computational abilities of the devices as well as causing overheating and surges in voltage as well as a variety of software and hardware incompatibilities. These issues when looked at individually appear to not have much of an impact on the results of this research but when combined together it is obvious that they reduced the results that could be obtained. In conclusion, the combination of hardware and software issues when combined with the temperature and voltage issues that were due to the overheating of the processor resulted in several insurmountable issues that could not be overcome. There are several recommendations for continuing this work including presyncing the blockchain using a computer, using a device that has more functionality and computational abilities, connecting a cooling device such as a fan or adding a heat sink, increasing the available power supply, utilizing an externally power hard drive for data storage, recreate this research with the goal in mind of determining what process or application was causing the high processor usage, or creating a distributed system that utilizes both physical and virtual equipment to reduce the amount of work on one type of device.