Title: Enriching blockchain with spatial keyword query processing

Authors: Muhammad Kashif Azhar; Bin Yao; Zhongpu Chen

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Hangzhou Institute of Advanced Technology, Hangzhou, China ' School of Economics and Information Engineering, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Abstract: Recently, after successfully revolutionising financial services, blockchain is now transforming a variety of other domains. However, current working abstraction requires technology to have more maturity from several key perspectives, and linear data processing is one of them. Blockchain, with its core characteristics like immutability, traceability, and decentralisation, has the potential to support various types of data. Currently, we find this design an ideal model to support spatial data structures, which, to the best of our knowledge, is a novel feature. We lead this opportunity to enrich blockchain with efficient spatial keyword data. We introduce spatial keyword index for block (SKIB), which is a cryptographically signed tree, thus maintaining the storage and integrity of original data from its spatial topological contexts. To demonstrate our work, we implement both textual first and spatial first pruning techniques. The comprehensive evaluation shows that SKIB provides efficient spatial keyword data processing on blockchains.

Keywords: blockchain; query processing; spatial keyword data; indexing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2023.133369

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2023 Vol.22 No.1, pp.91 - 116

Received: 22 Sep 2021
Accepted: 23 Feb 2022
Published online: 14 Sep 2023 *

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