TY - JOUR AU - Lin, Jun AU - Shen, Zhiqi AU - Miao, Chunyan AU - Liu, Siyuan PY - 2017 TI - Using blockchain to build trusted LoRaWAN sharing server JO - International Journal of Crowd Science SP - 270 EP - 280 VL - 1 IS - 3 AB - PurposeWith the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market and requirement, low power wide area (LPWA) technologies have become popular. In various LPWA technologies, Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) and long range (LoRa) are two main leading competitive technologies. Compared with NB-IoT networks, which are mainly built and managed by mobile network operators, LoRa wide area networks (LoRaWAN) are mainly operated by private companies or organizations, which suggests two issues: trust of the private network operators and lack of network coverage. This study aims to propose a conceptual architecture design of a blockchain built-in solution for LoRaWAN network servers to solve these two issues for LoRaWAN IoT solution.Design/methodology/approachThe study proposed modeling, model analysis and architecture design.FindingsThe proposed solution uses the blockchain technology to build an open, trusted, decentralized and tamper-proof system, which provides the indisputable mechanism to verify that the data of a transaction has existed at a specific time in the network.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that integrates blockchain technology and LoRaWAN IoT technology. UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCS-08-2017-0010 DO - 10.1108/IJCS-08-2017-0010