Supporting C2C Communications in a Smart Shire Environment Using DLT-based Data Mules

The pervasive diffusion of network attached devices has given rise to technologies like Internet-of-Things (IoT) which, in turn, enabled the development of smart applications improving existing services or offering innovative ones to geographically distributed territories (e.g. smart cities). Extending similar services to regions with limited connectivity is the main challenge of smart shires. In this context, the concept of data mule has been introduced which constitutes the basis of the InDaMul framework. This framework addresses the challenge of communication in areas with sparse connection coverage leveraging Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT). DLT is employed to incentivize owners of mobile devices to act as data mules, facilitating data transmission. This paper proposes InDaMulC2C an extension to the InDaMul framework, repurposing its infrastructure to support Client-To-Client (C2C) communications. InDaMulC2C supports direct C2C communications by allowing: (i) local offline interactions, (ii) deferral of the execution of on-chain operations subject to connection availability.