The rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a hyper-connected world, where billions of devices communicate across diverse and often unsecured environments. While this brings transformative benefits to sectors like healthcare, smart cities, and industrial automation, it also introduces unprecedented security, privacy, and trust challenges. Traditional security models are often inadequate for the decentralized, resource-constrained, and highly dynamic nature of IoT systems. Emerging technologies such as blockchain and quantum cryptography offer promising solutions, enabling new paradigms for secure and verifiable communication, decentralized trust, and post-quantum resilience.

communication frameworks in IoT ecosystems by exploring the synergy between blockchain technologies and quantum-enabled security solutions. As IoT devices increasingly operate in heterogeneous, delay-prone, and resource-limited environments, centralized security mechanisms are becoming obsolete. Blockchain offers decentralized identity management, immutable data logging, and transparent trust models, while quantum technologies promise resilience against powerful future adversaries through post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution.

The goal is to encourage interdisciplinary contributions that bridge cryptography, networking, IoT, and distributed computing, focusing on novel frameworks, algorithms, and protocols. We aim to attract innovative research that not only strengthens device-level and network-level security but also ensures scalability, interoperability, and sustainability in next-generation IoT systems. This topic aligns with global research priorities around secure digital infrastructure, contributing to several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9) and Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (SDG 16).

We invite original research articles, reviews, perspective papers, brief reports, and case studies that explore secure IoT communication using blockchain and quantum technologies. Submissions may address, but are not limited to:

- Post-quantum cryptographic protocols for IoT

- Blockchain-based identity management and authentication

- Lightweight cryptographic solutions for resource-constrained IoT devices

- Smart contract-based frameworks for device authentication and access control

- Quantum-secure authentication protocols for IoT communication

- Quantum key distribution in IoT networks

- Hybrid blockchain–quantum architectures enabling end-to-end trustworthy IoT communication

- Trust management and reputation models for decentralized IoT systems

- Intrusion detection and mitigation using decentralized trust models

- Adversarial modeling and attack surfaces in quantum-enabled IoT ecosystems

- Security-by-design approaches for future IoT and cyber-physical systems

- Lightweight consensus mechanisms

- Applied case studies in domains such as smart healthcare, autonomous vehicles, smart grids, and industrial IoT

We particularly welcome interdisciplinary works that demonstrate novel architectures or algorithms, real-world applications, simulations, and evaluations. Contributions should offer meaningful insights into building secure, scalable, and trustworthy IoT systems and may target theoretical foundations, applied frameworks, or emerging use cases.

Are you interested in contributing a manuscript to this Research Topic?

Trustworthy Communication in IoT: Blockchain and Quantum Technologies at the Security Frontier

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