Blockchain-Assisted Trust-Driven Secure Routing Protocol for Reliable Communication in Vehicular Networks (BTDSRP)

Abstract

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are emerging as a cornerstone of intelligent transportation systems, enabling efficient data exchange between vehicles and roadside infrastructure. However, ensuring secure and trustworthy routing remains a major challenge due to high node mobility, intermittent connectivity, and malicious node behavior. This research proposes a Blockchain-Assisted Trust-Driven Secure Routing Protocol (BTDSRP) to enhance communication reliability, data integrity, and routing efficiency in VANETs. The proposed BTDSRP integrates blockchain technology with a hybrid trust evaluation model to ensure transparent and tamper-proof routing decisions. Each vehicle maintains both direct trusts, derived from historical packet forwarding behavior, and indirect trust, computed from neighboring recommendations. These trust values are recorded in a lightweight blockchain maintained through a Delegated Proof of Stake-Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism, ensuring decentralized verification with minimal latency. Routing decisions are optimized using a Multi-Objective Optimization Function that jointly considers trust, link stability, delay, and residual energy to identify the most reliable path for data forwarding. A Trust Update Algorithm dynamically adjusts node reputation based on deviation from expected behavior, thereby isolating malicious nodes in real time. Extensive simulations using NS-3 and SUMO demonstrate that BTDSRP achieves superior performance compared to the conventional protocols such as AODV, DSR, and TRUSTAODV, yielding improvements of up to 18.7% in packet delivery ratio, 23.4% reduction in end-to-end delay, and 15.2% decrease in routing overhead. The results confirm that integrating blockchain with trust-based routing significantly enhances the security, transparency, and efficiency of vehicular communication networks, providing a robust foundation for next-generation 5G/6G-enabled intelligent transportation systems.