2964 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 17, NO.
4, APRIL 2021
A Blockchained Federated Learning
Framework for Cognitive Computing
in Industry 4.0 Networks
Youyang Qu , Member, IEEE, Shiva Raj Pokhrel , Member, IEEE, Sahil Garg , Member, IEEE,
Longxiang Gao , Senior Member, IEEE, and Yong Xiang , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Cognitive computing, a revolutionary AI con-
cept emulating human brain’s reasoning process, is pro-
gressively flourishing in the Industry 4.0 automation. With
the advancement of various AI and machine learning tech-
nologies the evolution toward improved decision making
as well as data-driven intelligent manufacturing has already
been evident. However, several emerging issues, including
the poisoning attacks, performance, and inadequate data
resources, etc., have to be resolved. Recent research works
studied the problem lightly, which often leads to unreliable
performance, inefficiency, and privacy leakage. In this arti-
cle, we developed a decentralized paradigm for big data-
driven cognitive computing (D2C), using federated learn-
ing and blockchain jointly. Federated learning can solve
the problem of “data island” with privacy protection and
efficient processing while blockchain provides incentive
mechanism, fully decentralized fashion, and robust against
poisoning attacks. Using blockchain-enabled federated
learning help quick convergence with advanced veri-
fications and member selections. Extensive evaluation
and assessment findings demonstrate D2C’s effectiveness
relative to existing leading designs and models.
Index Terms—Big data-driven, blockchain, cognitive
computing, federated learning, Industry 4.0, smart manu-
facturing.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE rapid proliferation of smart machines for Industry 4.0
T and the development of novel approaches using AI and
distributed learning for human-level information processing
have enabled the prosperity of cognitive computing [1], [2]. It is
often regarded as the technology that is built upon the scientific
rationales behind AI and signal processing [3]. The ultimate goal
is to allow the end machines like computers to learn from and
Manuscript received April 27, 2020; revised June 18, 2020; accepted
June 30, 2020. Date of publication July 7, 2020; date of current ver-
sion January 4, 2021. Paper no. TII-20-2101. (Corresponding author: L.
Gao.)
Youyang Qu, Shiva Raj Pokhrel, Longxiang Gao, and Yong Xi-
ang are with the Deakin Blockchain Innovation Lab. School of
Information Technology, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC 3125,
Australia (e-mail: y.qu@deakin.edu.au; shiva.pokhrel@deakin.edu.au;
longxiang.gao@deakin.edu.au; yong.xiang@deakin.edu.au).
Sahil Garg is with the École de technologie supérieure, Montreal,
Quebec H3C 1K3, Canada (e-mail: sahil.garg@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available
online at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TII.2020.3007817
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process thoughts like that of the human brain [4]. In this context,
the usage of AI is specifically for the best problem-solving
algorithm [5]. To better improve, cognitive computing beyond
and make great efforts to reproduce human intelligence by taking
advantage of a diversity of factors [1], smart decision making
as well as big data analytics for Industry 4.0 is impending
progress.
Despite all the advantageous features, data-driven cognitive
computing(D2C) is facing some nontrivial bottlenecks in Indus-
try 4.0 scenarios. The main barriers of big D2C for smart man-
ufacturing are threefold: first, low efficiency; second, privacy
leakage; and third, insufficient incentive to data contribution [6],
[7]. The low-efficiency roots in the massive volume of data from
a variety of Industry 4.0 devices [1]. For the data curators, there is
a risk of privacy leakage to contribute their data to the cognitive
servers or service providers [8], which subsequently leads to the
reduction of incentive to share the data [4]. These three issues
pose great challenges to the accuracy of outcomes.
To fix the privacy issues, differential privacy [9], and
cryptography-based methods [10] are widely deployed [11].
However, differential privacy and its variants lead to the degrada-
tion of data utility while cryptography-based methods increase
extra burdens to communication and computation resources
[12]. The efficiency issues are mitigated by the mild modifi-
cation of algorithms or light-weighted cryptography methods.
These methods can only slightly alleviate this issue but bring
about other issues like inaccuracy or less security protection
simultaneously.
Therefore, we propose to use federated learning as the learn-
ing paradigm for cognitive computing. With federated learning,
a central server and local servers maintain the same model at the
same time [1], [13], [14]. The training process is completed on
their own servers and only the model updates are exchanged from
local servers to the central server. Therefore, the local data will
not be revealed and thereby the privacy is preserved. Besides, the
volume of model updates is much smaller compared to the data
itself. The efficiency is also guaranteed in this way. Nevertheless,
federated learning also is subject to poisoning attacks, which
is a primary attack in the data science domain [15], [16]. The
aggregation performance is also constrained by the number and
quality of the local devices [17]. In addition, the incentive of
participants is not yet considered [18]. All these existing and
 QU et al.: BLOCKCHAINED FEDERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR COGNITIVE COMPUTING IN INDUSTRY 4.0 NETWORKS
emerging issues pose great challenges to the performances of
cognitive computing.
To further address these issues and make cognitive computing
more practical in Industry 4.0, we integrate blockchain to our
proposal and developed a decentralized cognitive computing
model (D2C). By deploying blockchain as the underlying ar-
chitecture, all local devices are regarded as the miners and users
of the blockchain. The verification mechanism of blockchain can
guarantee the authenticity of the data while select high-quality
and trustful edge devices. The reward and privacy-preserving
mechanism provide sufficient incentive to the users to participate
in the learning process and get rewards proportional to the
contribution. Moreover, by decentralizing the cognitive com-
puting, each of the participants could lead the learning process,
which removes the assumption of a trusted central authority and
prevents from single-point failure.
The main contributions of this article are summarized as
follows.
1) To improve the performances of Industry 4.0 manufac-
turing, we propose a novel framework by using federated
learning paradigm for big D2C. With the proposed frame-
work, the privacy and performance issues associated in
cognitive computing has been ameliorated significantly.
2) We devise a D2C paradigm in the industry 4.0 model by
jointly using federated learning and blockchain. By in-
corporating blockchain into federated learning, cognitive
computing can further improve the performances in terms
of poisoning attack resistance, accuracy, and incentive
mechanism for Industry 4.0 automation.
3) To model the confrontation against the adversaries, we
develop an optimization model using a modified Marko-
vian decision process, which improves the accuracy and
robustness against poisoning attacks.
II. RELATED WORK
In recent years, real momentum has been building up on
the investigation of cognitive computing from various aspects,
in particular from the perspective of federated learning and
blockchain.
To guarantee the privacy protection of cognitive computing,
Liu et al. [19] devised a location privacy-preserving model
based on dynamic spectrum auction . To further improve, Grissa
et al. [10] developed a novel location privacy model built upon
encrypted probabilistic data structures. The early-stage works
focused more on location privacy rather than the privacy of the
raw data. Motivated by this, Wang et al. [9] proposed a novel
differential privacy based data streaming model using Kalman
filter. The efficiency is mainly guaranteed by the modification
of algorithms or the development of hardware. In [20] and [1],
the authors proposed fog-based cognitive computing networks
independently, which is a classic way to improve efficiency. In
terms of the incentive mechanism, the authors showed how it
can enhance the performances of cognitive computing systems
in [21]. However, current works barely considered all identified
issues in a comprehensive manner.
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2965
Federated learning can provide advanced features from as-
pects of privacy protection and efficiency. The architecture of
federated learning is discussed in [22]. Sattler et al. [13] pro-
posed a variant of federated learning to provide extra robust
and communication efficiency. Blockchain is an advanced dis-
tributed ledger technology and has been deployed in several
real-world applications. The decentralized features enable the
removal of a trusted central authority [15]. It provides several
advanced features such as data authenticity, verification, incen-
tive mechanism, etc [23].
The advantageous characteristics of federated learning make
it suitable to work as the learning paradigms of cognitive learn-
ing [1]. However, there are some issues for federated learning,
such as poisoning attacks, insufficient incentives, etc. Therefore,
some pioneer works on the integration of blockchain and fed-
erated learning appear to provide enhanced protection. Pokhrel
and Choi [18], established on-vehicle federated learning using
blockchain to ensure privacy protection and data authenticity
[24]. Similarly, Lu et al. [17] extended this paradigm to the
industrial internet of things to allow privacy-preserving data
sharing in this scenario. Kim et al. [25] discussed the significance
of member selection and incentive mechanism in blockchain
to make federated learning more feasible and practical [26].
Nevertheless, there is barely any discussion on blockchained
federated learning for cognitive computing.
There are two similar works compared with the proposed
model. First, Pokhrel and Choi [14], [18], developed a novel
framework to use federated learning to improve the privacy
protection and efficiency simultaneously in the internet of ve-
hicles scenario. This article provides a detailed analysis of the
performance of efficient communication. The major difference
is that blockchain is not used such that fails to provide incen-
tive mechanism, decentralization, and poisoning attack features.
Another relevant analysis is reported in [15]. However, there
are some significant differences. In this article, we enhanced
the ideas proposed in [14], [15], [18] as follows. First of all,
we use blockchain-enabled federated learning as the underlying
structure of cognitive computing to enhance its performance in
big data era. Second, in this work, we discuss a fully decentral-
ized federated learning compared with that which is not fully
decentralized. Third, this work focuses more on the performance
upgradation using a modified Markov decision process (MDP)
but the previous one addressed the decentralized privacy issues.
Last but not least, the scenarios are quite different, which results
in a significant distinction from the aspect of inner logic when
deploying blockchain-enabled federated learning.
III. BLOCKCHAIN-ENABLED FEDERATED LEARNING
To enhance the D2C in Industry 4.0, we present the model
of D2C using blockchain-enabled federated learning, which is
shown in Fig. 1. Cognitive computing requires data collection
from multiple resources while privacy issues are emerging from
the end users or edge devices side. Therefore, we use federated
learning, with which only the model is shared rather than the raw
data. Both efficiency and data utility can be guaranteed in this
way. Besides, we use blockchain technology as the underlying
 2966 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 17, NO. 4, APRIL 2021

The objective function of the task is to minimize the output of the

loss function f (ω) where ω ∈ Rd is the global weights denoting
by a d-dimensional vector. For the purpose of simplifying the
learning task, we choose mean-squared-error as the loss function
f (ω) in this work.

1 
NV 
f (ω) = fk (ω), (1)
ND S i=1 sk ∈Si

where fk (ω)(xTk ω − yk )2 /2 and the notation (.)T denotes the

vector transpose operation. A variety of loss functions for dif-
ferent neural networks could be used in this scenario with minor
revision, which will be our future work.
With the predefined loss function, each industry 4.0 device
Vi maintains its local model with a stochastic variance reduced
gradient algorithm. The aggregation of local model parameters
is achieved using distributed approximate Newton (DANE) by
the temporary aggregator.
Fig. 1. Overview of data-driven cognitive computing using blockchain-
enabled federated learning in industry 4.0. Cognitive computing is
The efficiency of D2C can be further improved by setting the
achieved by federated learning while blockchain is leveraged as the un- ceiling amount of the global model’ epoch to a constant L. In
derlying architecture such that several performances could be improved, each of the epoch, Industry 4.0 device Vi is trained in Ni times.
such as accuracy and security.
Given tt h round of lth epoch and Industry 4.0 device Vi , the
(t,l)
local weight ωi ∈ Rd is formulated as
architecture to fully decentralize federated learning with the (t,l) (t−1,l)
ωi = ωi
proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. The decentraliza-  
tion enables poisoning-attack-proof, provides incentives, and β  
(t−1,l)
− fk (ωi ) − fk (ω ) + f (ω ) .
(l) (l)
extra accuracy guarantee by the member selection mechanism. Ni
(2)
A. Federated Learning Based Cognitive
Computing in D2C In (2), we define β as a step size where β > 0. The global
weight of D2C and the local weight after the last iteration
For cognitive computing in Industry 4.0, the federated learn- (l) (N ,l)
are both denoted by ω (l) since ωi = ωi i . After deriving
ing based cognitive computing is enabled by a cluster of industry N V 
sk ∈Si fk (ω ) from (1), we model the ω
(l) (l)
4.0 machines V = {1, 2, ..., vi ∈ V } where |V | = NV . Each of i=1 as
the industry 4.0 devices Vi stores a series of local data LDi where
 Ni  (l)
NV
|LDi | = NLD while all local data follows an independent and ω (l) = ω (l−1) +
(l−1)
ωi − ωi . (3)
identical distribution (II-D). Since, we will use blockchain to i=1
NLD
achieve decentralized federated learning, the exclusive central
The constrain to end the iteration process is determined by
server is replaced with selected temporary aggregator in each
the accuracy requirements of cognitive computing. We use  to
round. The details will be discussed in Section III-B. The
denote the constrain index where  is a small positive constant.
aggregator and local Industry 4.0 devices jointly maintain the
The global parameters is confirmed when |ω (L) − ω (L−1) | ≤ 
same learning model to achieve high-performance cognitive
is satisfied.
computing. Each Industry 4.0 device Vi maintains its local model
As discussed abovementioned, the temporary aggregator of
by training its local data. The parameters of the model (model
each round replaces the central server in a traditional setting.
updates) are sent to an associated miner Mi rather than an
The aggregator is selected with the blockchain network, which
exclusive central server. The selected miner is from a cluster
is described in detail in the next Section III-B.
M = {M1 , M2 , ..., MN } where |M | = N . If the number of
miners and Industry 4.0 devices are identically the same, we have
|M | = |V |, otherwise, |M | < |V |. The selected miner Mi with B. Blockchain in D2C
its associated Vi s will be regarded as the temporary aggregator Blockchain plays an important role to insure the performance
and train the global model parameters based on all local model of cognitive computing as discussed in this article. The ad-
parameters. After the global parameters are stored in the block, it vantages are threefold. The first advantage is that blockchain
will be broadcast to the whole Industry 4.0 network and rewrite can remove a central server to aggregate the model. Instead, a
all local models with the updated global parameters. specific Industry 4.0 device is chosen to lead this round of learn-
To make further improvements, the blockchain-enabled fed- ing. This can prevent single point failure, man-in-the-middle
erated learning aims at addressing a linear regression task on a attacks, etc. Second, blockchain provides incentive mechanism
set of independent local data LD = ∪N i=1 LDi where |LD| = NS .
V
such that the devices with high-performance or high-quality data

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 QU et al.: BLOCKCHAINED FEDERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR COGNITIVE COMPUTING IN INDUSTRY 4.0 NETWORKS
Fig. 2. Blockchain and block Structure: The
block body stores the
(l) (l)
model parameters ωi , {fk (ω (l) )}sk ∈Si , timestamp T{local,i} , etc
of V instead of transactions in traditional scenarios.
are willing to contribute. Third, blockchain can protect cognitive
models against poisoning attacks, which further improve the
performance, privacy protection, and fast convergence of the
D2C.
In this section, we present the settings of blockchain to
show how it improves the performance of federated learning
and further enhance D2C in Industry 4.0. Blockchain in this
context guarantees the authenticity of local model parameters
by various mechanisms such as cross verification. To fit into
this particular scenario, we design a novel blockchain in the
form of a public ledger as shown in Fig. 2. Similar to the basic
blockchain systems, the header of a block stores a pointer (hash
value) of the former block, the generation rate of the block, and
the consensus information like a nonce. In this article, we use
PoW as the consensus algorithm, whereas it is easy to apply other
consensus algorithms in this particular scenario. In this context,
it is reasonable to define the size of the block, which is sufficient
to save all model updates. Therefore, we use h + δm NV to
denote the size of a block, in which h is the size of the header,
and δm is the size of the model updates.
Every miner mi has a potential block that stores the model
parameters from its associated Industry 4.0 devices or other
miners. Usually, the block stops all writing operation if the
maximum block size or a predefined maximum waiting time
Twait is reached. To simplify the procedure, we initialize an
abundantly long waiting time, which allows all model updates
to be stored in the block.
The PoW consensus algorithm will decide the target nonce of
each round. The miners keep creating random nonce until the
target is identified. Once a specific miner Mi obtains the nonce,
he/she gains the right to use the associated block as the new
block and broadcast the block to all other parties. To speed up the
consensus process in this Industry 4.0 scenario, we can choose
to modify the value of λ to enable a light-weighted consensus
algorithm.
The efficiency of blockchain is mainly determined by the
consensus algorithm. Although PoW and proof-of-stake are two
mainstream consensus algorithms, there are more and more
emerging consensus algorithms can reach a satisfying transac-
tion per second. Moreover, to further improve the performance
of storage, we can introduce on-chain and off-chain structure
which stores the raw data in off-chain hash table while a pointer
is saved in the distributed public ledger.
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2967
After the new block is broadcast to other parties, it will
be linked to the local ledger of each party for synchronizing
purposes. This requires all parties are forced to quit the nonce-
finding process as soon as they receive the new block. Due to the
built-in weakness of decentralized systems, there is a potential
for forking when another miner Mj finds the nonce within the de-
lay of the block propagation. Some parties may link a false block
to their local ledger because of forking. Therefore, forking may
mislead some Industry 4.0 devices to generate poisoned model
updates and thereby negatively impact the final convergence. To
address this, it is essential to balance the blockchain generation
rate and the propagation delay in real-world scenarios.
In addition, an incentive mechanisms and a verification mech-
anism are also provided. There are two forms of incentive,
including data reward and token reward. We make the data
reward of an Industry 4.0 device be proportional to its corre-
sponding data sample size Ni . Analogically, the token reward
is also proportional to the aggregated data sample size of all
N M
associated Industry 4.0 devices, in particular, i=1j . The two
incentive mechanisms jointly motivate the miners to contribute
local data and computing resources, which straightly upgrade the
performance of federated learning enabled cognitive computing.
In this article, we allow a flexible mapping between the miners
and the industrial 4.0 devices. That means a mine might be
associated with several machines. The two kinds of rewards are
for mines and devices, correspondingly. The token reward is
for the miners while the data reward is for the devices. Since
the limitation of the page length, this work does not discuss
the incentive mechanism in detail. We will further address the
incentive mechanism in our forthcoming research.
A primary issue of this incentive mechanism is that malicious
Industry 4.0 devices may deceive the miners by falsifying actual
sample sizes. That is also one situation why verification is
necessary. To simplify the verification process, the compari-
son between the data sample size and the computation time
(
T{local,i} l) is conducted to testify the reliability, which is also
known as proof of elapsed time. The detailed algorithm is shown
in Algorithm 1.
Initialization: the parameters are randomly selected from
(0)
{ωi , ω (0) ∈ (0, ωmax ]} for a constant ωmax , and the global gra-
dient f (ω (0) ) ∈ (0, 1], which follows a uniform distribution.
Local model update: the Industry 4.0 device Vi solve (2) with
respect to Ni iterations.
Local model upload: miners Mi and Industry 4.0 machines
Vi are associated randomly. The Industry 4.0 device uploads the
(l)
local model parameters (ωi , {fk (ω (l) )}sk ∈Si ) to the miner
Mi . In addition, the corresponding local computation time is
uploaded for verification purpose.
Verification: the miners Mi verify the associated Industry 4.0
devices’ model parameters and computing time in sequence.
(l)
Whether the computing time is T{local,i} is proportional to the
size of data decides the reliability of the model parameters. The
verified data is stored in the potential block of the miner until
all model parameters are verified and stored in a block.
Block generation: the PoW consensus algorithm runs in each
round. It stops when one of the miners finds the nonce and
 2968 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 17, NO. 4, APRIL 2021

state transition. We consider a two-player scenario, which in-

Algorithm 1: Data Driven Cognitive Computing Using
cludes the aggregator and a poisoning attack adversary. We
Block-Enabled Federated Learning Algorithm.
use a six-tuple to represent the established MDP model as
Input: Industry 4.0 machines Vi and associated miners Mj ; {S, (A1 , A2 ), R1 , R2 , P r}.
Output: Advanced cognitive computing model; In this scenario, there are two players and we use a seven-
1: Initialization parameters Pk s; tuple, {S, (A1 , A2 ), R1 , R2 , P r}, to denote the MDP model. S
2: while New LD? do is the discrete space of system states. A1 is the action space
3: Vi train its local model; of the aggregator and A2 is the action space of the adversary.
4: Upload Pk s to the Mj ; R1 , R2: S1 × S2 × A1 × A2 −→ R are the payoff functions of
5: Miners Mj conduct cross verification; the aggregator and the adversary, respectively. P r: S1 × S2 ×
6: if Mi finds the nonce of bi then A1 × A2 −→ δS is used to denote the transition probability,
7: All parties link bi to local ledgers; where δ(S) is the set of probability distributions over the system
8: Drop all other bˆi ; state S.
9: end if
10: Winning miner Mw broadcast bi ;
A. Actions of the Aggregator and an Adversary
11: Mw train the global model GM ;
12: Pk s of GM → Vi s; In blockchain-enabled federated learning, the high availabil-
13: end while ity allows an end device (a potential player) to leave and join
the learning process anytime. Therefore, it is quite easy for an
internal malicious device to launch poisoning attacks in order to
mislead the output or even more.
To this end, we consider a clever adversary A, whose com-
puting ability is constrained while participating in the learning
process and postprocessing is conducted to improve the attack-
ing performances. This is quite different from the traditional
static adversary who cannot falsify or inject any data, which
Fig. 3. Markov decision process: The actions of players, system
states, payoff functions mutually contribute to the final convergence to
is infeasible and loses focus on real problems. An adversary A
the Nash equilibrium. actively collects the global updates published by the previous
aggregators and analyzes the pattern of the collected data to
launch progressive attacks, whereas the aggregator of each round
tries to resist the adversary’s attack by changing the strategies
generate a new block while forcing others from the consensus (actions) during a finite set of stages.
process. We use the Choquet integral of both the quality of local data
Block propagation: the winning miner Mô ∈ M broadcast and computing power to denote the action of the aggregator.
his/her associated block to all parties as a new block. All miners After considering the last state St−1 , the current aggregator
in the system append the new block on their local ledgers. To decides its action. The action of the aggregator at stage t is
prevent forking, a specially designed signal ACK is used and defined as Atu .
transmitted if a miner does not identify any forking. Every miner We use the probability of whether to launch poisoning at-
takes action after receiving ACK from all other miners. If not, tacks to define the adversary’s action. As abovementioned, only
the process will be suspended and restart the iteration from the limited computing resources are owned by the adversary to
beginning. analyze the global updates of former aggregators. Therefore,
Global model update: the selected miner aggregates all local the adversary’s action at stage t is defined as Atad , which is
model parameters by using DANE, after which, the new global an indicator of the possibility of the adversary launching a
parameters will be stored in a block. poisoning attack. Based on this, we also represent the adversary’s
Global model download: all Industry 4.0 machines are al- computing constrain as (6).
lowed to download the global parameters from the new block 
and decide to continue in the next round or not. Atad ≤ Ψ, 0 ≤ Atad ≤ 1 (4)
t

IV. PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION USING MDP
In this section, we use the MDP to model the selection of the
aggregator (temporary central server) in each round such that the
D2C model is optimized in terms of accuracy and security. The
MDP is shown in Fig. 3. For clarity, we use a two-player game as
an example. This constraint could be extended to multiplayers
cases easily.
The MDP is a game that is played in multiple but fi-
nite times while the game is constrained by the probabilistic
where the Ψ is the adversary’s maximum computing power.
When Ψ ≥ t, we say the adversary is able to analyze all global
updates while Ψ < t means the adversary is incapable of doing
so and have to choose a strategy to analyze.
B. System States of MDP
In this context, the aggregator acts as the temporary central
server and broadcasts the global updates to all end devices for
further utility. The global updates of the aggregator are published

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 QU et al.: BLOCKCHAINED FEDERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR COGNITIVE COMPUTING IN INDUSTRY 4.0 NETWORKS 2969

through blockchain depending on the current system state. The MDP. To formulate the Nash equilibrium, we define the payoff
adversary tries to infer the distribution or the data pattern, and of each stage as the subtraction of a QoS-based value and the
sometimes even the state transition rules. entropy-based information loss in (7)
From the aspect of the poisoning attack, both current global
updates and the adversary’s action should be considered. Intu-
itively, the aggregator has a prior belief in the action and strategy
of the adversary. Thus, the aggregator can only estimate the
adversary’s action based on the output of the last attack, which
can be identified by the aggregator. For one thing, the output of
the last attack indicates if the adversary successfully launches the
attack and inject the falsified data into it. For another, the current
system states have only one precondition, namely, the last system
state of the MDP. An instance is that the aggregator identifies a
significantly reverse trend away from the convergence and then
it can be relatively sure of the existence of a poisoning attack in
this round. That is also the reason why blockchain is necessary
to store the record of all global updates, especially the ones
impacted by poisoning attacks. We use ARt as the poisoning
attack outputs at stage t. If ARt = 1, we regard the poisoning
attack as a successful one. If ARt = 0, it indicates a failed
poisoning attack. Otherwise, there is a partially functioning
poisoning attack. To sum up, the current action of the aggregator
depends on both the global updates of this round and the output
of the last poisoning attack. We define the system state as
S t = {GUt , ARt }
where GUt denotes the global updates of stage t.
     
R (S t , Atu , Atad = QoS Atu − ω · IL S t (7)
where QoS(Atu ) is a mapping function that denotes the qual-
ity of global model updates, and IL(S t ) is the information
loss of the global updates GUt derived from the information
entropy.
D. Nash Equilibrium
In the modeled dynamic zero-sum game, the strategy of
MDP is defined as the probabilistic state transitions based on
the actions of the aggregator and the adversary. To denote the
strategy of the aggregator, we use τ u : Su −→ δ(Au ) while
τ ad : Sad −→ δ(Aad ) is the strategy of the adversary, where
(Su , Sad ) ∈ S is the space of system state. Besides, δ(Au ) and
δ(Aad ) are two probability distributions over the action spaces
of the aggregator and the adversary.
To make the model practical, we define the learning process
as a finite process while the initial state S0 starts from the
first aggregator shares the first global update GU0 at stage
t = 0. Based on a specific system state s ∈ S and two strategies
(5) (τ ad , τ u ), we reformulate the payoff of the aggregator as
   


P U τ (s) = E R S t , Atu , Atad
τu , τad , S 0 = s . (8)
Based on (5), we move on the discussion on the state tran- t=0
sitions in this MDP model. The uncertainty of state St roots in
the uncertainty of global updates GUt , while the system state According to the previous modeling, we want to derive the
depends on the actions of the two parties. Similarly, the attack optimal strategy, in which the actions Atu , Atad are decided by
result ARt is decided by the actions. Based on the abovemen- the policies τu , τad . Thus, we further reform (8) as
tioned dependency relations, we formulate the state transition    


as P U τ (s) = R s, Atu , Atad + Pr s
s, Ats , Atad P U τ (
s) .




s
Pr S t
S t−1 , At−1 t−1
u , Aad (9)

 
 We assume the aggregator and the adversary are two rational


players who always follow their best strategies. We use τu∗ to
= Pr GUt
GUt−1 Pr ARt
ARt−1 , At−1 u , Aad
t−1
∗

 
 represent the optimal strategies of the aggregator and τad to

= Pr GUt
GUt−1 Pr ARt
At−1 t−1
u , Aad . (6) denote the adversary, respectively. At a specific stage, an optimal
strategy pair is defined a τ ∗ = {τu∗ + τad
∗
}, to denote the optimal
The second equality is reached as the output of the poisoning strategies at this stage. This optimal strategy pair is regarded to
attack ARt at stage t is exclusively determined by the actions of be equivalent to the Nash equilibrium of the dynamic zero-sum
the aggregator and the adversary at stage t − 1. In other words, game, which is shown as
the output of poisoning attack ARt−1 has no impact on ARt . Lemma 1 (Nash equilibrium): Let s ∈ S be the state in a
dynamic zero-sum game, the Nash equilibrium is the optimal
C. Payoff Function of MDP strategy pair τ ∗ = {τu∗ + τad∗
}, which is
We introduce the payoff function of MDP in this section.  ∗
P U τ (s) ≥ P U τad (s)
The payoff function is based on the actions and states of the (10)
∗
aggregator and the adversary in MDP, which are the aggregator P U τ (s) ≤ P U τu (s)
and the adversary in this context. The multistage game is played
for finite times. There is a payoff value rt (S t , Atu , Atad ) for each where τad = {τu , τad ∗ }, τu = {τu ∗ , τad }, for all τad and τu .
stage deriving from the actions of the aggregator and current In Section IV-C, we have concluded that this is a zero-sum
state S at stage t. The aggregator Au aims at maximizing the game where the aggregator aims at maximizing τ u∗ while the
∗
payoff from a long-term perspective while the adversary hopes adversary will try the best to minimize τ ad . Based on (9),
to minimize it in an opposite way. In this case, the model could we formulate the derivation of Nash equilibrium as a min–max
be defined as a dynamic zero-sum game built upon the given problem as

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 2970 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 17, NO. 4, APRIL 2021

TABLE I
GLOBAL ACCURACY USING CIFAR-10

Fig. 4. Value-based Learning: The outputs of Q() functions are an

approximation of the average cumulative payoff associated with their
corresponding actions and states.

Algorithm 2: Efficient Q-Learning Algorithm.

Input: The MDP with Au , Aad , S, R;
Output: The optimal strategy π ∗ ;
AT(x): denotes the consumption of time to reach the global accuracy of 0.4 or 0.7.
1: t = 0, ARt=0 = 0; With the decrease in the value of AT(x), the performance improves to some extent.
2: Initialize {πu , πad }; Accuracy: is the value of accuracy when the iteration ends.
3: while Convergence not reached do
4: Select Atu , Atad based on {πu , πad };
5: Update the output of poisoning attack ARt+1 ; randomly. The D2C model is implemented as a CNN model. The
t federated learning system will maintain the CNN model in a
6: Update the system state  P U (AR);
t decentralized way by means of blockchain. D2C has nine 3 × 3
7: Train the optimal strategy πt+1 using 
P U (AR); convolution layers with 2 × {32, 64, 128} channels, which are
8: Aggregator selection using blockchain; activated by ReLU followed by 2 × 2 max pooling. Besides,
9: end while three connected layers are linked to the nine channels with 192
and 382 RelU-activated units and 10 soft-max-activated units.
 Based on these settings, D2C will roughly have 13.8 million
τ∗
 
P U (s) = max min R s, Atu , Atad
τu τad
 Other learning models may have higher performances, which
 

is not the emphasis of this article and will not be discussed in
+ P r s
s, Au , Aad P U (
t t τ
s) .

s
The existence of an exclusive Nash equilibrium in such a
dynamic zero-sum game, which also confirms the existence of an
exclusive Nash equilibrium, is provable along the lines of [27].
E. Speedup Convergence With Q-Learning
To derive the exclusive Nash equilibrium of the proposed
MDP, we use a modified Q-learning reinforcement learning
model, which is shown in Fig. 4. The leveraged Q-learning
model can reduce the computing complexity by reducing the
cardinality. The following algorithm is proposed to derive the
optimal strategy of both the aggregator and the adversary.
V. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
In this section, we show the extensive simulation on a real-
world dataset entitled “CIFAR-10”. The results are derived from
a D2C task using blockchain-enabled federated learning. We
correspondingly measure the global model accuracy, the conver-
gence of model, and poisoning attack resistance. The evaluation
results show the superiority of the proposed D2C model from the
abovementioned three aspects. Some initial settings are shown
as follows.
We consider an IID setting [18], which is the most frequently
used one regarding federated learning to guarantee accuracy.
Each Industry 4.0 machines select a data sample from the dataset
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hyperparameters for the dataset. We use 64− bit double float as
the data type and set the sizes of Dm as 15.4 Mb and 20.3 Mb.
(11)
detail.
A. Evaluation on Accuracy of Global Models
This section focus on the accuracy of global models along
with the corresponding arrival time (AT), which is shown in
Table I. Each of the models runs for 50 times such that the value
of accuracy and AT are calculated using the arithmetic mean.
From the aspect of AT, D2C has an advanced performance in
various settings. It is adequate to prove the high efficiency of
D2C under the Industry 4.0 scenario (resource limited). Besides,
the improvement of accuracy is the key focus of D2C. The classic
setting of federated learning without blockchain achieves an
accuracy of around 0.7. The obtained values of accuracy are in
the range from 0.74–0.82 except the case with Tround = 1 s (r =
0%), which is an impractical case even for the classic settings.
The uncertainty of throughput and computing power, as two
long-lasting primary concerns, barely have any negative impact
on the performance of D2C.
To train the models, we initialize several key hyperparameters
as follows. We set the minibatch size as 50 and number of epochs
as 60. At its initial stage, stochastic gradient descent updates’
learning rate is 0.25. Then, we model the computing ability of
all Industry 4.0 devices as the number of samples that could be
trained for further model updates. The value might vary a bit due
to other executing tasks on the devices, which is also practical
in real-world scenarios. The average computing ability of each
 QU et al.: BLOCKCHAINED FEDERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR COGNITIVE COMPUTING IN INDUSTRY 4.0 NETWORKS
Fig. 5. Poisoning attackresistance performance: the impact of hash
rate on the turbulence of data and minimum hash rate requirements
of successful poisoning attacks are presented. (a) Hash rate versus
turbulence of data (b) Minimum requirements of successful poisoning
attacks.
Fig. 6. Global convergence: the convergence at different samples
regarding different learning rates.
Industry 4.0 device is normally distributed in [1, 100], which is a
reference to select clients. Therefore, the time cost by updating
varies in the interval of [4s, 400 s]. The computing ability is
determined by the normal distribution in both the update phase
and upload phase as discussed in the abovementioned sections.
We then define the normal distribution with r% value and
average throughput as μ and σ, respectively. The defined range
is reasonable because the server requires at least 4 s to process
one update with a single graphical processing unit (GPU). The
update time takes up to 100 times if there exists low-performance
Industry 4.0 devices. Based on the abovementioned settings and
experiences, the Tfinal is set to be 500 s while Tround is 3 s.
B. Evaluation on Fast Convergence
Fig. 6 shows that D2C can reach fast convergences at various
learning rates. A higher learning rate can bring faster conver-
gence within a certain threshold. The threshold depends on
different scenarios and the corresponding settings. Furthermore,
Fig. 6 confirms that D2C can converge even if the sample data
is not large and therefore the high scalability is guaranteed.
The convergence value is 0.7 at the learning rate of 0.59. This
performance is higher compared with the rest two learning
rates that converge at 0.53 and 0.42. All in all, D2C satisfies
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2971
Fig. 7. Block generation rate: the convergence latency versus the
block generation rate and the optimal block generation rate are pre-
sented. (a) λ (b) λ∗ .
the constrains in this big data era, especially for Industry 4.0
scenarios.
C. Evaluation on the Defense Against Poisoning Attacks
The defense to poisoning attacks is mostly guaranteed by the
blockchain in D2C. To show the performances, we compare
D2C with simply using blockchain or federated learning. It is
hard to poison a mature blockchain system, therefore, we use
the initial stages of the blockchain to illustrate the differences
of the models regarding the defense against poisoning attacks.
Fig. 5(a) shows that the volume of turbulence increases if the
hash rate of the poisoning adversary grows. For classic federated
learning, poisoning attacks take effect as soon as it is launched,
but a threshold needs to be passed for successful attacks in
blockchain-based systems. The poisoning attacks function when
the amount of blocks is less than 10 in this setting. With the
increase of block amount, an exponential increase of time and
computing power consumption is required, which is a great
barrier for the adversaries. In Fig. 5(b), we testify the exponential
growing trend from the aspects of block amount. The tendency
of hash-rate consumption clearly follows an exponential distri-
bution. When the block amount approaches 30, the requirement
is over 1012 . With time passing by, more and more blocks are
appended which provides increasingly high protection.
D. Evaluation on Blockchain Generation
We illustrate the impact of block generation rate λ on D2C’s
convergence latency. The observation on the latency shows a
convex-shaped curve over λ. Besides, the latency decreases
with the values of the signal-to-noise ratio, which is shown in
Fig. 7(a). Moreover, the minimum convergence latency derived
from the λ∗ (optimal generation rate) is shown in Fig. 7(b). The
convergence latency of the simulated results is slightly higher
 2972 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 17, NO. 4, APRIL 2021
(1.8% on average) than the theoretically calculated values, which
shows the effectiveness of D2C.
We assume the blockchain is tamper-proof, which has an
abundantly large network to defeat the untrusted parties. In the
proposed model, only the Industry 4.0 devices have full control
over their own data. It is nearly impossible for an adversary
to compromise the network due to decentralization. Besides,
model updates are protected by digital signatures. Even if the
adversary can access the data of specific Industry 4.0 device, the
on-chain data is the pointer instead of the raw data, which makes
it even hard to launch poisoning attacks. In the worst case, an
adversary compromises several Industry 4.0 device with its local
data, there are sufficiently distributed local copies, which will
overwrite the compromised ones.
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this article, we developed a novel D2C platform through
the combined use of federated learning and blockchain for smart
manufacturing in Industry 4.0. Our federated learning idea ad-
dresses issues of privacy and efficiency while blockchain facili-
tates federated learning for poisoning-attack-proof functionality
by adopting advanced selection method. The D2C paradigm
significantly increased computational processing efficiency for
intelligent manufacturing. Extensive assessment findings de-
rived from the real-world datasets confirms D2C dominance. In
our future research, we are planning to find the optimal tradeoff
among several performance indexes and develop a customized
reward system to promote public devices to participate in the
high-performing industry.
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Youyang Qu (Member, IEEE) received the B.S.
degree in mechanical automation and M.S. de-
gree in software engineering from the Beijing
Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2002
and 2015, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
in informaiton technology from the School of
Information Technology, Deakin University, Mel-
bourne, VIC, Australia, in 2019.
He is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with
Deakin University. His current research interests
focus on dealing with security and personalized
privacy issues in blockchain, social networks, machine learning, and IoT.
Dr Qu is active in communication society and has served as a TPC
Member for IEEE flagship conferences including IEEE International
Conference on Communications (ICC) and IEEE Globecom.
 QU et al.: BLOCKCHAINED FEDERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR COGNITIVE COMPUTING IN INDUSTRY 4.0 NETWORKS
Shiva Raj Pokhrel (Member, IEEE) received
the B.E. and M.E. degrees from Pokhara Univer-
sity, Pokhara, Nepal, in 2007 and 2013, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Swinburne
University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Aus-
tralia, in 2017, all in ICT engineering.
He is a Lecturer of Mobile Computing with
Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia. He
was a Research Fellow with the University of
Melbourne (2017–2018) and a Network En-
gineer with Nepal Telecom (2007–2014). His
current research interests include federated learning, Industry 4.0,
blockchain modeling, optimization, recommender systems, beyond 5G,
cloud computing, dynamics control, Internet of Things and cyber–
physical systems as well as their applications in smart manufacturing
and autonomous vehicles and cities.
Dr. Pokhrel serves/served as the Workshop Chair/Publicity Co-Chair
for several IEEE/ACM conferences including IEEE Conference on Com-
puter Communications, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE ICC, ACM Interna-
tional Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, and more.
He was the recipient of the prestigious Marie Skłodowska–Curie grant
Fellowship in 2017.
Sahil Garg (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D.
degree in computer science from the Thapar
Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala,
India, in 2018.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fel-
low with École de technologie supérieure, Mon-
treal, QC, Canada. His research interests are
mainly in the areas of machine learning, big
data analytics, knowledge discovery, cloud com-
puting, internet of things, software defined net-
working, and vehicular ad-hoc networks. He is
also an Associate Editor for the IEEE NETWORK MAGAZINE, IEEE SYS-
TEMS JOURNAL, Elsevier’s Future Generation Computer Systems, and
Wiley’s International Journal of Communication Systems. In addition, he
guest edited a number of Special Issues in top-cited journals including
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, IEEE
TRANSACTIONS OF INDUSTRAIL INFORMATICS, the IEEE IOT JOURNAL, IEEE
Network Magazine, Future Generation Computer Systems (Elsevier),
Neural Computing & Applications (Springer), etc.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on March 21,2023 at 12:18:42 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2973
Longxiang Gao (Senior Member, IEEE) re-
ceived the Ph.D. degree in computer science
from Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia,
in 2013.
He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow
with IBM Research and Development Aus-
tralia, Southbank. He is currently a Senior
Lecturer with the School of Information Tech-
nology, Deakin University. He has more than
70 publications, including patent, monograph,
book chapter, journal, and conference papers.
Some of his publications have been published in the top venue,
such as the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MOBILE COMPUTING, the IEEE
INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON DEPEND-
ABLE AND SECURE COMPUTING, and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VE-
HICULAR TECHNOLOGY. His current research interests include data
processing, mobile social networks, fog computing, and network
security.
Dr. Gao is active in the IEEE Communication Society. He has served
as the TPC Co-Chair, the Publicity Co-Chair, the Organization Chair,
and a TPC member for many international conferences.
Yong Xiang (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the B.E. degree in electronic engineering and
M.E. degree in communications and elec-
tronic systems from the University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China, Chengdu,
China, in 1983 and 1989, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engi-
neering from The University of Melbourne, Mel-
bourne, VIC, Australia, in 2003.
He is currently a Professor with the School of
Information Technology, Deakin University. He
is also the Associate Head of School (Research) and the Director of
the Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics Research Cluster. He has
obtained a number of research grants (including several ARC Discovery
and Linkage grants from the Australian Research Council) and published
numerous research papers in high-quality international journals and
conferences. He is the coinventor of two U.S. patents and some of his
research results have been commercialised.
Prof. Xiang is the Editor/Guest Editor of several international journals.
He has been invited to give keynote speeches and chair committees
in a number of international conferences, reviewed papers for many
international journals and conferences, served on conference program
committees, and chaired technical sessions in conferences.