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@article{208860,
        author = {Vishal Garg},
        title = {Internet of Communicating Things (IoCT): A Decentralized, Post-Quantum Secure Architecture for Cooperative IoT Systems},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {4},
        pages = {2827-2836},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=208860},
        abstract = {The Internet of Communicating Things (IoCT) extends the traditional Internet of Things (IoT) by making autonomous, peer-to-peer communication the primary paradigm: intelligent devices discover neighbors, propagate data and decisions through gossip-based dissemination, validate one another, and act locally in real time. This paper presents the IoCT reference architecture as three planes: a real-time communication-and-decision plane built on adaptive gossip protocols and embedded intelligence; a security plane specified as IoCT-KMS, a hierarchical post-quantum key-management scheme built on the NIST ML-KEM and ML-DSA standards and engineered for constrained links; and a pluggable trust-and-data plane that may reside entirely in enterprise infrastructure, anchor selected records to a distributed ledger, or use a natively relational, post-quantum ledger such as the NCOG Earth Chain Dual-Consensus Database. Shared state is managed with conflict-free replicated data types under strong eventual consistency, while a deterministic local safe-state override preserves functional-safety guarantees independent of network conditions. We analyze latency requirements from 3GPP, SAE, and industrial-safety standards to show why decisions of the safety and coordination classes must be made locally; quantify the on-air cost of post-quantum cryptography on IEEE 802.15.4 and LoRaWAN links; position the architecture against related systems and patents; and outline an evaluation plan. Supported by an extensive review of standards and peer-reviewed research, IoCT offers a scalable, self-healing, and quantum-resistant foundation for cooperative ecosystems of communicating things.},
        keywords = {Internet of Communicating Things (IoCT); decentralized IoT; gossip protocols; device-to-device communication; post-quantum cryptography; ML-KEM; ML-DSA; conflict-free replicated data types; blockchain; decentralized database.},
        month = {September},
        }