Challenges of IoT sensors in smart buildings ecosystems and integration of blockchain for enhanced security and efficiency

Abstract

Integrating Internet of Things (IoT) sensors into smart buildings has completely transformed the way to optimize and manage building management systems, from energy management to enhancing security systems. However, IoT sensors have several challenges in the context of smart buildings. The major challenge is that the vast quantity of data produced by the IoT sensors may outstrip the capabilities of current infrastructure, resulting in data storage, management, and analysis issues. Furthermore, the data generated by IoT sensors can also be unreliable and imprecise due to various environmental conditions, thereby impacting the performance of systems that rely on IoT technologies. Security is also a big challenge, as cyberattacks targeting IoT devices could endanger the confidentiality of building residents and premises. To address these challenges, adopting blockchain technology is a possible solution. Blockchain offers protection by using the decentralized ledger features for data collected from IoT sensors, as it guarantees permanent records are transparent and tamper-proof. This paper aims to highlight the different challenges faced by IoT sensors in smart buildings, and possible solutions are also provided, taking into consideration blockchain technologies. This review provides a detailed analysis of 104 works, synthesizing existing literature to evaluate the challenges of IoT sensors and how Blockchain-based approaches are applied to these challenges. This review addresses a specific gap: the absence of a building-specific, sensor-layer synthesis that systematically links smart-building IoT-sensor challenges to concrete blockchain design choices. Beyond surveying the field, we contribute a structured challenge mechanism mapping covering privacy/security, interoperability, scalability, real-time processing, energy, maintenance, localization, limited AI integration, and false positives to guide the design of secure and efficient building-management systems.