Post Quantum Digital Signature Change in IOTA to Reduce Latency in Internet of Vehicles (IoV) Environments

Abstract

In the last decade, the Internet of Things has witnessed exponential growth in demand and development. The growth of IoT and the increasing need for automation have led to an exciting application in the transportation industry, namely the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Simply put, IoV systems are vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) enhanced by integrating them with automation over the internet. As briefly discussed in this paper, the IoV systems guarantee various advantages like a much safer and more efficient future. However, the primary challenge at hand is implementing IoV at the end-user level. Of the varied building blocks present on the road to the development of IoV, secure data transfer is an essential requirement, especially with recent advances in quantum computing. IOTA is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) specifically designed to secure IoT data transmissions. This paper discusses the advantages of implementing IOTA for secure and private IoV systems. The paper suggests replacing IOTA’s current post-quantum signature scheme Winternitz One Time Signature (W-OTS) with CRYSTALS Dilithium. These two post-quantum signature schemes are evaluated against each other to establish that employing Dilithium reduces both latency and signature space required, bringing a significant improvement to IOTA. This improvisation is beneficial, especially for the fast-paced functioning of IoV environments.