  Thanks to rapid technological advances in the Internet of Things (IoT), a
smart public safety (SPS) system has become feasible by integrating
heterogeneous computing devices to collaboratively provide public protection
services. While a service oriented architecture (SOA) has been adopted by IoT
and cyber-physical systems (CPS), it is difficult for a monolithic architecture
to provide scalable and extensible services for a distributed IoT based SPS
system. Furthermore, traditional security solutions rely on a centralized
authority, which can be a performance bottleneck or single point failure.
Inspired by microservices architecture and blockchain technology, this paper
proposes a BLockchain-ENabled Decentralized Microservices Architecture for
Smart public safety (BlendMAS). Within a permissioned blockchain network, a
microservices based security mechanism is introduced to secure data access
control in an SPS system. The functionality of security services are decoupled
into separate containerized microservices that are built using a smart
contract, and deployed on edge and fog computing nodes. An extensive
experimental study verified that the proposed BlendMAS is able to offer a
decentralized, scalable and secured data sharing and access control to
distributed IoT based SPS system.
