Syed Muhammad Ahsan, Hassan Abbas Khan, and Naveed-ul-Hassan
Smart buildings are being built as a synergetic deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy sources. Smart charging of EVs and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies are seen as way forward in this context in terms of achieving economic, technological, and environmental advantages. This paper proposes a framework for multi-objective techno-economic optimization for profit maximization of multiple inter-connected buildings (with bilateral contracts) and scheduling of EVs. The optimization problem is modeled as mixed integer linear programming problem, which is solved using CPLEX solver in ILOG optimization studio. The primary building owns the photovoltaic system coupled with storage and charging infrastructure for the fleet of EVs. The optimized charging of EVs at affordable rates using local resources at primary building assists the grid in managing the EVs’ load during peak hours. Results indicate that the primary building gains up to 62% daily profit after factoring in solar, storage, and charging station deployment costs. Additionally, secondary buildings (without solar, storage and charging facilities) earn up to 20% cost savings depending upon the nature of bilateral contracts with primary building. The results further suggest that fleet of EVs gains 35%–65% savings in charging cost based on lower charging rates and V2X operations with primary and secondary buildings.
Blockchain technology is considered as revolutionary for its potential to revolutionize many sectors by addressing existing issues in the traditional systems. A blockchain is a digital ledger consisting of transaction records that is duplicated and distributed to every participant computer in the network. Insurance industry is one of the most significant sectors where large institutes dominate the market. The traditional insurance process is highly centralized and cost-intensive to both insurance companies and customers. The process involves a third party to handle several processes among multiple parties manually in the form of paperwork. Inefficiency in centralized, manual processes lead to large frictional costs being borne by the customers. Also, conflicts of interest between insurance companies and policyholders are very common due lack of trust, lack of transparency, and ambiguity in policy terms. To provide a solution for these issues in the traditional centralized systems, this research proposes a blockchain-based, decentralized platform for insurance. The platform aims to replace the conventional insurance companies. Using blockchain technology, the platform allows users to transact directly with each other, eliminating the need for an intermediary third party.
Rongxin Xu, Qiujun Lan, Shiva Raj Pokhrel, Gang Li
The Internet of Things (IoT) and Distributed ledger technology (DLT) have significantly changed our daily lives. Due to their distributed operational environment and naturally decentralized applications, the convergence of these two technologies indicates a more lavish arrangement for the future. This article develops a comprehensive survey to investigate and illustrate state-of-the-art DLT for various IoT use cases, from smart homes to autonomous vehicles and smart cities. We develop a novel framework for conducting a systematic and comprehensive review of DLT over IoT by extending the knowledge graph approach. With relevant insights from this review, we extract innovative and pragmatic techniques to DLT design that enable high-performance, sustainable, and highly scalable IoT systems. Our findings support designing an end-to-end IoT-native DLT architecture for the future that fully coordinates network-assisted functionalities.
The worldwide targets for carbon-neutral societies increased the penetration of distributed generation and storage. Smart cities now play a key role in achieving these targets by considering the alliances of their demand and supply assets as local citizen energy communities. These communities need to have enough weight to trade electricity in wholesale markets. Trading of electricity can be done in spot markets or by bilateral contracts involving customers and suppliers. This paper is devoted to bilateral contracting, which is modeled as a negotiation process involving an iterative exchange of offers and counter-offers. This article focuses on local citizen energy communities. Specifically, it presents team and single-agent negotiation models, where each member has its sets of strategies and tactics and also its decision model. Community agents are equipped with intra-team strategies and decision protocols. To evaluate the benefits of CECs, models of both coalition formation and management have been adapted. This paper also describes a case study on forward bilateral contracts, involving a retailer agent and three different types of citizen energy communities. The results demonstrate the benefits of CECs during the negotiation of private bilateral contracts of electricity. Furthermore, they also demonstrate that in the case of using a representative strategy, the selection of the mediator may be critical for achieving a good deal.
Riya Kakkar, Rajesh Gupta, Mohammad Dahman Alshehri, Sudeep Tanwar · 6 authors
This article proposes a blockchain and non-cooperative game theoretic-based secure and optimized data pricing scheme, i.e.,Block-CPS. It aims to secure the data transactions between vehicle owners and customers for rides. It uses the fifth-generation (5G) communication network that offers ultrareliable low-latency communications between vehicle owners and customers. The Interplanetary file system (IPFS) storage protocol used in the proposal reduces the blockchain data storage cost. We then formulated a non-cooperative game-theoretic approach to maximize the profits for vehicle owners and customers. Formulated non-cooperative game is integrated with blockchain to provide security to the Block-CPS. The vulnerability of the developed smart contract is verified and validated using tools like smartcheck and verisol. The performance of Block-CPS is evaluated by comparing it with the traditional approaches using blockchain with 4G and LTE-A networks. The performance evaluation parameters used are system scalability, network latency, data storage cost and its computation, network throughput, profit, communication reliability, and convergence for the optimal payoff between vehicle owners and customers. The performance results shows the Block-CPS outperforms the traditional blockchain-based systems.
A loyalty program is a type of incentive to reward customers’ perceived value and enhance their purchasing behavior. The key to the success of a loyalty program is to allow customers to more actively participate in the program. One possible solution is to allow customers to sell out idle loyalty points and buy in the points that they need. On the basis of a call auction, this study designs a peer-to-peer exchange mechanism for customers to realize the above trade. In addition, a blockchain-based system is developed to support the issuance, redemption, and exchange of loyalty points. In this study, Hyperledger Fabric is adopted as the underlying blockchain technology because it has some features that are beneficial to a cross-organizational coalition loyalty program. This study also proposes a feasible multi-host deployment scheme for the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network that is suitable for our application scenario. Finally, some implementation results are given to demonstrate the system process from the perspective of the application layer. The mechanism proposed in this study is helpful to improve the likelihood of successfully exchanging points, thus accelerating the circulation and use of loyalty points.
Electric vehicles (EVs) have gained prominence in smart transportation due to their unparalleled benefits of reduced carbon footprints, improved performance, and intelligent energy trading mechanisms. These potential benefits have increased EV adoption at massive scales, but energy management in EVs is a critical study problem. The problem is further intensified due to the scarcity of charging stations (CSs) in near EV proximity. Moreover, as energy transactions occur over open channels, it presents critical security, privacy, and trust issues among decentralized channels. To address the open limitations of trusted energy management and optimize the pricing control among EV entities (i.e., prosumers and consumers), the paper proposes a scheme that integrates blockchain and a truthful double auction strategy for trustful EV trading. To address the transaction scalability, we integrate an Interplanetary File System (IPFS) with a double auction mechanism handled through the Remix Smart Contract environment. The double auction leverages an optimal payoff condition between peer EVs. To address the communication latency, we present the scheme at the backdrop of Fifth Generation (5G) networks that minimizes the optimal payoff response time. The scheme is simulated against parameters such as convergence, profit for consumers, computation time, and blockchain analysis regarding node commit latency, collusion attacks, and EV energy consumption. The results indicate the scheme’s viability against traditional (non-blockchain) approaches with high reliability, scalability, and improved cost-efficiency.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is converting today’s physical world into a complex and sophisticated network of connected devices on an enormous scale. The existing malicious node detection mechanism in traditional approaches lacks in transparency, availability, or traceability of the detection phase. To overcome these concerns, we provide a decentralized technique using blockchain technology. Despite the fact that blockchain technology is applicable to create that type of models, existing harmony set of instructions are susceptible to do violence to such as DoS and Sybil, making blockchain systems unfeasible. Here, a new Proof-of-Improved-Participation (PoIP) harmony instruction was suggested that benefits the participation rules to select honest peers for mining while limiting malicious peers. Under an evaluation the PoIP outperforms the Proof-of-Work (PoW) instructions are demonstrated, Proof of Stake (PoS) instructions in terms of energy consumption, accuracy, and bandwidth. To compare the three consensus protocols with respect to efficiency, we build a lightweight mining model and find that PoIP consensus has greater efficiency than PoW and PoS. PoIP has 25% lower attack risk than existing consensus. As a consequence, our suggested methodology can provide the needed security with minimal attack risk and high accuracy, according to the analysis results. As a result, suggested consensus is more efficient than existing methods in terms of block generation time. Hence we suggest that suggested consensus is very suitable for IoT-based applications especially in healthcare.
The cab-sharing system provides a platform for drivers and riders with shared trip services, providing significant benefits, such as decreasing traffic congestion, reducing travel costs, and limicting energy consumption, which improve the business of transportation. However, existing cab-sharing systems mainly depend on the centralized authority to provide many services, increasing privacy concerns and facing the single point of failure issue. Also, these systems expose drivers’ or riders’ locations and personal information that increase security issues, and charge high fees for services due to the involvement of third-party providers. Therefore, this paper proposes a decentralized and secure cab-sharing system to provide ride-sharing services using blockchain technology without any trusted third party. The proposed system uses the blockchain structure to preserve the driver’s or rider’s information, such as personal details, travel price, pickup or drop-off locations, departure or arrival date, and time. Furthermore, it implements the reputation feature to rate drivers and riders based on their travel history or behaviors without any centralized authority that allows users to select them based on their past experiences on the system. The proposed architecture is deployed using the Ethereum platform and functionality is designed using smart contracts. The performance evaluation and experimental results show that the proposed system requires low computational overheads and provides an efficient cab-sharing platform.
Sujit Sangram Sahoo, Aravind R Menon, Vijay Kumar Chaurasiya
This paper aims to implement a blockchain-based, fully decentralized vehicle toll collection model. The resultant scheme uses a Global positioning system to track the vehicles, and the payment module is fully decentralized and uses Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum blockchain uses immutable documents called smart contracts to carry out business logic. It ensures that every transaction between vehicle owners and the authorities is traceable, immutable, transparent, and trustworthy. The Global Positioning System provides the location of an object using coordinates measured using satellites. The data from GPS is recorded constantly to ensure that the vehicle has traveled to the correct location and is stored in a publicly verifiable blockchain. The other vehicle owners work as location verifiers except for the particular vehicle. An automatic payment system is to be developed, which gets triggered when necessary conditions are met by the vehicle. Our proposed model is authentic and secure, ensuring penalties for malicious participants. The experimental results are based on the Gas consumption of all the smart contracts. This model can improve the current toll collection model of the National Highway Authority of India to make it more profitable and corruption-free.
Pronaya Bhattacharya, Ashwin Verma, Mohammad S. Obaidat, Sudeep Tanwar · 5 authors
In modern smart communities,decentralized ridesharing (RS) via cab aggregator (CA) services allow users to share trips at reduced expenses, and also help in mitigating congestion. The cab user (CU), and cab driver (CD) share sensitive information (credentials, account linkages, and location information) via open channels over CAs distributed server. During trips, in some cases, CDs do not follow an optimal path from source to destination, which leads to increased payments. Thus, inconsistencies occur due to a lack of transparency between CU, CDs, and CAs. Motivated from the same, we propose a scheme, SaFaR, that integrates consortium Solana blockchain (SBC) to assure transparency and transactional scalability between entities. CU and CD information is maintained in offline interplanetary file systems (IPFS) ledgers during the registration process, and the meta-information is stored in SBC. An optimal dynamic route algorithm is proposed based on retrospective priority queue in Dijkstra algorithm (RPQDA) is proposed on GPS-trace points obtained from path setup, that is modelled as a graph. The optimal route is stored on IPFS, so route alterations are not possible. Simulation analysis results have shown that an improvement of 99% storage cost is obtained due to IPFS, and an average improvement of 14.89% is obtained in travelling cost over dynamic and static-route setups.
The Internet of Things (IoT) can be conveniently deployed while empowering various applications, where the IoT nodes can form clusters to finish certain missions collectively. In this paper, we propose to employ unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assist the clustered IoT data collection with blockchain-based security provisioning. In particular, the UAVs generate candidate blocks based on the collected data, which are then audited through a lightweight proof-of-stake consensus mechanism within the UAV-based blockchain network. To motivate efficient blockchain while reducing the operational cost, a stake pool is constructed at the active UAV while encouraging stake investment from other UAVs with profit sharing. The problem is formulated to maximize the overall profit through the blockchain system in unit time by jointly investigating the IoT transmission, incentives through investment and profit sharing, and UAV deployment strategies. Then, the problem is solved in a distributed manner while being decoupled into two layers. The inner layer incorporates IoT transmission and incentive design, which are tackled with large-system approximation and one-leader-multi-follower Stackelberg game analysis, respectively. The outer layer for UAV deployment is undertaken with a multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient approach. Results show the convergence of the proposed learning process and the UAV deployment, and also demonstrated is the performance superiority of our proposal as compared with the baselines.
With the advent of modern technologies, including the IoT and blockchain, smart-parking (SP) systems are becoming smarter and smarter. Similar to other automated systems, and particularly those that require automation or minimal interaction with humans, the SP system is heuristic in delivering performances, such as throughput in terms of latency, efficiency, privacy, and security, and it is considered a long-term cost-effective solution. This study looks ahead to future trends and developments in SP systems and presents an inclusive, long-term, effective, and well-performing smart autonomous vehicle parking (SAVP) system that explores and employs the emerging fog-computing and blockchain technologies as robust solutions to strengthen the existing collaborative IoT-cloud platform to build and manage SP systems for autonomous vehicles (AVs). In other words, the proposed SAVP system offers a smart-parking solution, both indoors and outdoors, and mainly for AVs looking for vacant parking, wherein the fog nodes act as a middleware layer that provides various parking operations closer to IoT-enabled edge devices. To address the challenges of privacy and security, a lightweight integrated blockchain and cryptography (LIBC) module is deployed, which is functional at each fog node, to authorize and grant access to the AVs in every phase of parking (e.g., from the parking entrance to the parking slot to the parking exit). A proof-of-concept implementation was conducted, wherein the overall computed results, such as the average response time, efficiency, privacy, and security, were examined as highly efficient to enable a proven SAVP system. This study also examined an innovative pace, with careful considerations to combatting the existing SP-system challenges and, therefore, to building and managing future scalable SP systems.
Electric vehicles (EVs), one of the most effective solutions to reduce gas emission and realize fossil fuels replacement, are enjoying growing popularity from governments to customers. The development of EVs leads to significant advances in vehicle automation and electrification, but meanwhile poses additional heavy charging and data processing burden on current smart grid. Considering the mutual demand and supply relationship between EVs and smart grid in both charging and computing tasks, we integrate vehicular fog computing (VFC) and smart EV charging for joint optimization and propose an integrated charging and computing (IC2) architecture for EV-included smart grid. In the proposed IC2 architecture, charging stations are profit-driven third-party power prosumers that also help compute tasks offloaded by smart grid while EVs act as both energy consumers and computation providers. We employ the contract theory to provide a multiattribute contract-based charging protocol for EVs and charging stations in an information asymmetry scenario. To obtain the optimal contract, we derive KKT conditions and design a convex–concave-procedure-based contract optimization algorithm. We also design a heuristic offloading algorithm to assign heterogeneous tasks toward different EVs. Numerical results indicate that the proposed multiattribute contract-based charging-computing scheme can effectively benefit both the charging stations and EVs, and meanwhile improves the task computation capability in EV-integrated smart grid.
Changes in the online car-hailing industry have brought new challenges to government governance. Effectively enhancing governance efficiency has become the focus of academic research. Based on the technical governance perspective, this paper introduces the consortium blockchain to construct an evolutionary game model between the online car-hailing platform and the government under blockchain technology. By solving the replicated dynamic equations and the Jacobian matrix, the influences of the change in initial conditions and decision parameters on the evolutionary stability results are revealed, and numerical experiments are carried out by using the Python programming language. This paper claims that the system presents three evolutionary stable results and a periodic stochastic state when the key parameters are located in different thresholds. The additional cost of the platform's negative regulation and the government's punishment intensity have a positive effect on the evolution of the system to the ideal state (active regulation, active governance). Platform technology R&D cost and government innovation input have a negative effect on the evolution of the system to the ideal state. Therefore, using blockchain to increase the additional cost of the platform's negative regulation, appropriately increasing the government's punishment intensity, reasonably controlling the government's innovation input to the platform, and reducing the technology R&D cost of the platform will help the system evolve into an ideal state. This paper provides useful references to implement effective governance and the innovative and healthy development of the online car-hailing industry.
Tushar S Menon, Aviral Srivastava, x Aditya, K R Radhika
Ridesharing is an effective method to resolve traffic congestion and also reduce pollution due to excess vehicles on-road. However, the centralized nature of the current ridesharing systems is not ideal for the user. The lack of transparency in the system as well as risk of data security is a big demerit for such a system. To keep the third-party involvement minimal, a trustless, decentralized peer-to-peer ridesharing DApp is being proposed using a private Ethereum blockchain. Credibility of ride sharing systems can be improved by implementing blockchain technology. Blockchains are decentralized databases where every single piece of information is stored on systems everywhere which can be retrieved and traced freely by anyone on the network. The system will no longer be trust-based but simply based on concrete proof that exists which is built into the ledger. In a blockchain-based system, a rider will anonymously post a ride request. A driver can accept the request and provide their id details and quote. The rider can choose if the transaction is fair and accept the quote and begin his ride. Various other concepts such as time-locked deposit and proof-of-elapsed distance have been introduced to ensure further security for driver and rider. The primary goal of such a system is to develop a reliable and transparent ride sharing system where users do not have to worry about their privacy.
Sudeep Tanwar, Riya Kakkar, Rajesh Gupta, Maria Simona Raboacă · 7 authors
The adaptation of intelligent transportation system has evolved the quality of life of people with the huge demand for electric vehicles. Moreover, it becomes essential to schedule an electric vehicle for charging optimally. Therefore, this paper proposes a blockchain-based electric vehicle charging reservation scheme for optimum pricing. It primarily aims to secure data transactions between electric vehicles and charging stations. It uses the communication channel as 5G to ensure ultra-low latency and extremely high reliability. Furthermore, the proposed scheme uses a double-auction mechanism to optimize the payoff for both electric vehicles and charging stations. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated by distinguishing it from the conventional networks such as 4G and LTE-A. The performance parameters are considered profit and loss for electric vehicles, scalability, cost overhead for data storage, communication overhead for data transactions, and data storage cost. Results show that the proposed scheme is secure and achieves the optimized payoff for electric vehicles and charging stations compared with traditional approaches.
Soufiane El Moudaa, Youssef Ibrahim, Maha Kadadha, Rabeb Mizouni · 6 authors
In this paper, a blockchain-based management platform, PackChain, for last-mile delivery is proposed. The growing popularity of online shopping has put immense pressure on the supply-chain industry, especially on last-mile delivery. The available solutions suffer from high cost, and lack of transparency. Therefore, assuring traceability of users' actions has become a critical requirement to establish trust between parties. The proposed PackChain framework uses the Ethereum blockchain to offer a crowdsourcing platform for last-mile delivery with autonomous and transparent processes. PackChain provides all the core functions needed for the delivery framework to operate through smart contracts such as managing user information, accepting offers, verifying transactions, and handling payments. In addition, the framework relies on proofs of delivery as an arbitration mechanism between users to release or hold funds. The proposed framework is implemented using Solidity and Web3.js to interact between clients and carriers. The emulation results demonstrate the feasibility and cost-efficiency of the proposed solution11The full code of the smart contract and the related logic is also made publicly available on Github..
Industrial applications often require federated cloud services from multiple providers to improve reliability and flexibility. Traditional selection methods through auctions usually involve a centralized auctioneer to coordinate the auction procedure. Blockchain and smart contracts provide a decentralized mechanism to automate the cloud auction process; however, existing solutions fail in the selection of the most suitable providers and the violation detection of the signed auction agreements, which are also known as service-level agreements (SLAs). To tackle these problems, we propose an integrated auction model using Bayesian game theory and blockchain techniques. The proposed model is enhanced with two Bayesian Nash Equilibriums (BNEs); the first BNE enables the selection of cost-effective providers to construct the federated cloud services, while the second BNE ensures consistent and trustworthy monitoring of federated SLAs. Moreover, a timed message submission (TMS) algorithm is proposed to protect the auction privacy during the message submission phase. This paper validates the equilibrium results of two BNEs and implements the proposed model on the Ethereum blockchain. The analytical and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility, trustworthiness, and cost-effectiveness of our model.