As a representative of clean energy, photovoltaic is expected to become a major supplier of electricity in the future. The combination of electric vehicle (EV) battery and charging station provides a feasible way to promote the effective consumption of photovoltaic. However, the efficiency of mobile power supply is limited by information asymmetry and security problems, and it is urgent to optimize the distribution process. Firstly, the article introduces the energy blockchain to improve the security level of electricity transaction, and designs the photovoltaic-energy storage-charging supply chain. Secondly, based on the selected road network and the actual situation of EV mobile power emergency distribution, the distribution logistics network with 50 distribution points is built. Thirdly, taking the delivery time and comprehensive cost as objective functions, the mathematical model of emergency distribution route optimization for EV mobile power supply is established, and the adaptive NSGA-II algorithm is adopted for example analysis. Finally, the parameter variation of NSGA-II and comparison with two algorithms of GA and MOPSO are carried out to validate the feasibility and applicability of proposed method. The purpose of the research is to quickly and effectively select the optimal distribution route of mobile power supply from many roads by maximizing customer demands and reducing costs, so as to promote the photovoltaic consumption.
Abstract The rapid development of autonomous vehicle technology has brought a new experience to people's daily travel. However, if a traffic accident involving autonomous vehicles occurs, it will face difficulties in vehicle accident forensic‐preservation, leakage of vehicle owner's privacy, and identifying legal liabilities. This article proposes an accident responsibility identification model for the Internet of Vehicles based on lightweight blockchain to solve the above problems. This model uses Car Forensics Master to collect evidence from the accident vehicle, and at the same time collects evidence from maintenance service providers, automobile manufacturers, transportation management departments, insurance companies, and other vehicle accident related parties and stores them in the preservation chain. We also use VPKI to protect the autonomous vehicle identity privacy. In order to improve the efficiency of the model and set up authorized access to related entities, the identification of accident liability is jointly completed by the preservation chain and the accident identification chain. In addition, we prove that the protocol proposed in the model has ideal security properties. Finally, we implement the smart contracts in the model through the Solidity language, and evaluate its performance.
Riya Kakkar, Smita Agrawal, Rajesh Gupta, Sudeep Tanwar
This paper proposes a zero-sum game theory and blockchain-based secure and decentralized dynamic pricing scheme for electric vehicle charging. It aims to secure data sharing between electric vehicles and charging stations. We integrate the sixth-generation (6G) communication network to enable data transactions between electric vehicles and charging stations with low latency and high reliability. We employ a zerosum game theory approach to maximize the payoff of electric vehicles and charging stations. The performance of the proposed system with 6G is evaluated by comparing it with 5G and 4G traditional networks. The performance evaluation of the proposed system has been analyzed with various parameters latency, profit for electric vehicles, profit for charging station, and optimal payoff of the system. The results show that the proposed system is highly secure and reliable than traditional systems.
Existing ride sharing services are monetary-based and are managed by centralized service providers. In this paper, we propose a decentralized non-monetary ride-sharing platform in which users interact directly with each other. Fairness is ensured through the use of credits so that a user not only enjoys rides but also offers to drive from time to time. The application is developed on the Ethereum blockchain and is designed to provide transparency and verifiability in its operations.
In recent years, advancements in electric vehicle (EV) technology and rising petrol prices have increased the demand for EVs and also made them important for the Smart Grid (SG) economy. During the high energy demand, Vehicle to Grid (V2G) comprises a notable feature that returns the stored energy back to the grid. However, due to dynamic nature of energy prices and EVs availability, determining the best charging and discharging strategy is quite difficult. The existing approaches need a model to predict the uncertainty and optimize the scheduling problem. Further, other issues like security, scalability, and real-time data accessibility of EVs energy trading (ET) data at low cost also exist. Though many solutions exist, they are not adequate to handle the aforementioned issues. This paper proposes a Secure V2G-Energy Trading (SV2G-ET) scheme using deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Ethereum Blockchain Technology (EBT). The proposed SV2G-ET scheme employs a deep Q-network for EVs scheduling for charging/discharging. SV2G-ET scheme uses InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and smart contract (SC) for secure access of EV’s ET data in real time. The experimental results prove the efficacy of the proposed SV2G-ET scheme that leads to improved scalability, saving the EVs charging cost, low ET data storage cost, and increased EV owner’s profit.
The article is devoted to investigation of perspectives of implementation of the smart vehicle rental agreement. On the basis of current civil legislation the vehicle rental agreement is defined as an agreement under which a lessor transfers or undertakes to transfer to a lessee an air, sea, river vessel, ground self-propelled vehicle etc. in using for a fee for a certain period. A general legal characteristics of this agreement includes its reality or consensus, payment, timeliness and bilaterality. The list of features of the subject of the studied contract, which includes the inexhaustibility of types of vehicles, its technical features, the presence of signs of a source of increased danger, the existence of special legislation governing its use, and supplemented them by taking into account the volume and type of engine. Requirements to the form of the vehicle rental agreement, which generally is written, and if one of the parties is an individual, it is subject to notarization, are considered, and a possibility of its negotiation and further execution as a smart agreement is analyzed. The positions of scientists on the essence and main features of a smart contract which consist in its specifics regarding the form of negotiation and way of execution due to automation. The characteristics and problems of execution of the vehicle rental agreement which connected with activity of a lessee of a vehicle, bearing of expenses, insurance and causing a damage for a subject of the agreement and other person with using of a vehicle are followed. It is remarked the features of renting a vehicle with the crew which serves it. On the basis of the conducted investigation perspectives of implementation of the smart vehicle rental agreement are formulated, and they are seen in increasing the level of legality of the negotiated agreement, obtaining access to all necessary for parties information and electronic documents, automatic and timely payment of a rent, timely fulfillment of execution of a commitment and improvement of control over the subject of a rent.
A key aspect for the efficiency and security of maritime transport is linked to the associated information flows. The optimal management of maritime transport requires the sharing of data in real-time between the various participating organizations. Moreover, as supply chains become increasingly integrated, the connectivity of stakeholders must be ensured not only within the single port but also between ports. Blockchain could offer interesting opportunities in this regard and is believed to have a huge impact on the future of the digitization of the port and maritime industry. This document analyzes the state of art and practice of blockchain applications in the maritime industry and explores the application prospects and practical implications of blockchain for building an interport community. The paper uses SWOT analysis to address several research questions concerning the practical impacts and barriers related to the implementation of blockchain technology in port communities and develops a Proof of Concept (PoC) to concretely show how blockchain technology can be applied to roll-on roll-off transport and interport communities in real environments. In this regard, this study intends to contribute to the sector literature by providing a detailed framework that describes how to proceed to choose the correct blockchain scheme and implement the various management and operational aspects of an interport community by benefiting from the blockchain.
Blockchain has been forming the central piece of various types of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) network for trusted data exchange. Recently, permissioned blockchains garner particular attention thanks to their improved scalability and diverse needs from different organizations. One representative example of permissioned blockchain is Hyperledger Fabric (“Fabric”). Due to its unique execute-order procedure, there is a critical need for a client to select an optimal number of peers. The interesting problem that this paper targets to address is the tradeoff in the number of peers: a too large number will degrade scalability while a too small number will make the network vulnerable to faulty nodes. This optimization issue gets especially challenging in V2X networks due to mobility of nodes: a transaction must be executed, and the associated block must be committed before the vehicle leaves a network. To this end, this paper proposes a mechanism for selecting an optimal set of peers based on reinforcement learning (RL) to keep a Fabric-empowered V2X network impervious to dynamicity due to mobility. We model the RL as a contextual multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem. The results demonstrate the outperformance of the proposed scheme.
Kun Zhu, Lu Huang, Jiangtian Nie, Yang Zhang · 7 authors
For future Internet of Things (IoT) systems, data-driven and dynamic spectrum-sharing schemes can significantly improve the spectrum utilization and efficiency. However, conventional centralized architecture of such dynamic IoT spectrum-sharing systems is often considered to be nontransparent, costly, and vulnerable to potential attacks and single-point failures. To address the aforementioned issues, a blockchain-based dynamic spectrum-sharing scheme has been proposed and investigated in this work, which aims at enhancing the system by providing desirable features, such as decentralization, transparency, immutability, and auditability. By considering the privacy and transaction dynamics issues when blockchain is integrated into spectrum-sharing systems, a privacy-preserving double auction mechanism based on differential privacy is developed for incentivizing spectrum sharing, where the time-varying valuations of the spectrum resources are also taken into consideration. In the proposed auction, a winner determination problem (WDP) is formulated to decide the winning bidders and spectrum allocation. A deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based method is then proposed for efficiently solving the WDP. The proposed auction mechanism can be integrated with smart contracts on blockchain platforms. Furthermore, the computation of the DRL-based method for solving the WDP is designed as part of the consensus mechanism in the blockchain. Theoretical analysis show that the proposed privacy-aware double auction mechanism satisfies the properties of differential privacy, individual rationality, and truthfulness. Finally, simulation results are provided to validate the performance of the spectrum-sharing approach.
Dueto its distributed characteristics, the development and deployment of the blockchain framework are able to provide feasible solutions for a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. While the IoT devices are usually resource-limited, how to make sure the acquisition of computational resources and participation of the devices will be the driving force to realize blockchain at the network edge. In this article, an edge computing-based blockchain framework is considered, where multiple edge service providers (ESPs) can provide computational resources to the devices for mining. We mainly focus on investigating the trading between the devices and ESPs in the computational resource market, where ESPs act as the sellers and devices act as the buyers. Accordingly, a sequential game model is formulated and by exploring the sequential Nash equilibrium (SE), the existence of the optimal solutions of selling and buying strategies can be proved. Then, a deep Q-network-based algorithm with modified experience replay update method is applied to find the optimal strategies. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed incentive mechanism on forming the blockchain via the assistance of edge computing.
Muhammad Saad, Muhammad Khalid Khan, Maaz Bin Ahmad
This systematic literature review provides an extensive categorization of the blockchain-enabled applications across the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Within the paradigm of distributed ledger technology (DLT), the communication models and practices for VANETs have been revolutionized. An analytical review and a survey were conducted to explore the advancements of blockchain and VANETs. The techniques, limitations, and advantages of blockchain deployment in VANETs are discussed for the effective implementation of a decentralized network. To this end, 68 studies were selected on the basis of the procedural steps to provide a comprehensive overview of blockchain and the smart contracts in VANETs. In particular, a decentralized communication model is also proposed for the advanced implementation of blockchain in VANETs. Researchers and practitioners are being attracted to these technologies for applications for various industrial sectors. Therefore, this study also emphasizes the identification of any blockchain-related open issues for future prospects. The comprehension of blockchain applications for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is also explored in order to fill the research gap on advanced communication networks across the Internet of Things.
Sebastian Finke, Michele Velenderic, Semih Severengiz, Martin Fortkort · 6 authors
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a rapidly growing market with a large potential for the transition of the mobility sector. Business models based on sharing economy in the mobility sector open many opportunities for providers and users to benefit from new types of transportation modes such as light electric vehicles (LEVs). However, there are deficits in the sustainability of sharing systems with such vehicles, which result primarily from the origin of the energy for charging, as well as from the charging processes and the infrastructure used for this purpose. The electricity must be generated from renewable energies and vehicles should ideally be put on charge by the user on-site in the operation area to avoid service rides by mobility service providers. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) can provide solutions for these issues: on the one hand, it can provide proof of origin (PoO) for the electricity; in addition, tokens that can be used to pay for vehicle usage can be generated and assigned to users to incentivize behaviors like charging the vehicles. In this paper a crypto token-based scheme for a PoO for renewable energy, as well as for user incentives to charge the vehicles to make shared mobility services more sustainable is described. The proposed solution includes a concept for a network backend, implemented as a private blockchain network using the open source blockchain solution Hyperledger Fabric. The backend will store data about the usage of LEVs and batteries as well as relevant data of charging and swapping stations. The user incentive tokens and smart contracts for transaction automatization are stored in the backend. Furthermore, a front end consisting of two applications: one for users and stakeholders respectively, is part of the solution.
The expected benefit of smart contract (SC) relies heavily on its completeness and adaptability. Previous studies have discussed the application of SC on construction at the conceptual level, while a method to reflect human preferences as action items to enforce schedule executability is not available for construction managers. The objectives of this research are (1) to develop a method to generalize human preference as scheduling practices, and (2) to utilize SC technology to facilitate the execution of the practice. Performance data of different labor investment and production rate arrangements were obtained through a simulation of a high-rise construction project operation. This research used a Choquet Integral-based approach to aggregate owners’ preferences on workspace overlap, manpower utilization, and project duration to customize the optimum scenarios for resource utilization. Such decision rules were bundled with payment transactions and then embedded as agreements in an SC-based scheduling platform. The SC platform developed can provide the optimized resource utilization solution under different preferences, meanwhile timely disseminate schedule information and facilitate payment transactions. The research findings will assist project managers to quickly react to unexpected changes in management preferences in manpower, space, or schedule by developing adaptable resource utilization solutions. It will also help them to enforce the execution of the plan timely using the SC scheduling platform.
The Internet of Vehicles (IoV), where people, fleets of electric vehicles (EVs), utility, power grids, distributed renewable energy, and communications and computing infrastructures are connected, has emerged as the next big leap in smart grids and city sectors for a sustainable society. Meanwhile, decentralized and complex grid edge faces many challenges for planning, operation, and management of power systems. Therefore, providing a reliable communications infrastructure is vital. The fourth industrial revolution, that is, a cyber-physical system in conjunction with the Internet of Things (IoT) and coexistence of edge (fog) and cloud computing brings new ways of dealing with such challenges and helps maximize the benefits of power grids. From this perspective, as a use case of IoV, we present a cloud-based EV charging framework to tackle issues of high demand in charging stations during peak hours. A price incentive scheme and another scheme, electricity supply expansion, are presented and compared with the baseline. The results demonstrate that the proposed hierarchical models improve the system performance and the quality of service (QoS) for EV customers. The proposed methods can efficiently assist system operators in managing the system design and grid stability. Further, to shed light on emerging technologies for smart and connected EVs, we elaborate on seven major trends: decentralized energy trading based on blockchain and distributed ledger technology, behavioral science and behavioral economics, artificial and computational intelligence and its applications, digital twins of IoV, software-defined IoVs, and intelligent EV charging with information-centric networking, and parking lot microgrids and EV-based virtual storage. We have also discussed some of the potential research issues in IoV to further study IoV. The integration of communications, modern power system management, EV control management, and computing technologies for IoV are crucial for grid stability and large-scale EV charging networks.
In recent years, in order to reduce the consumption of petroleum energy and environmental pollution, China has actively promoted the development of new energy vehicles and achieved good results. Car ownership has surged year after year. However, the development of supporting infrastructure (charging pile) for electric vehicles is seriously backward, and the layout of electric vehicles and charging piles is extremely uneven. The difficulty of charging has gradually become the main factor restricting the development of electric vehicles. Block-chain technology has the technical advantages of decentralization, traceability and non tampering, and is widely used. The proposed blockchain-based charging piles maintenance system is able to provide an end-to-end transparent and high reliability management mode for multi-agents including the charging pile, power distribution station, maintenance, calibration and supervision institutions. In order to propose this method, we first design realization of electric vehicle charging pile sharing system and decentralized scheduling model. Then we design functions of the blockchain based charging pile maintenance system. At last, we provide simulation results and analysis to verify the efficiency of our proposed method.
Lei Zhang, Long Cheng, Fahad Alsokhiry, Mohamed A. Mohamed
This paper proposes a secure management framework for optimal scheduling and operation of energy systems in smart cities, which will bring balance in modern power systems. The expanded infiltration of energy systems along with stochastic performance and high data transfer rate can bring new challenges that may severely affect precise energy management. This research work investigates the optimal and secure operation of energy systems in the presence of smart transportation systems in a correlated energy system. To achieve the maximum efficiency from the transportation system, the ideas of vehicle-to-subway (V2S) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) are utilized to develop a bilateral power flow strategy (charging/discharging or idle mode) to provide the chief charging requirements of energy systems. In this regard, the proposed model suggests a novel stochastic architecture based on unscented transformation (UT) to handle the operational uncertainties of the transportation systems when considering the correlated power generation of wind turbines (WTs). Moreover, blockchain technology is deployed to guarantee the security of data transfer within the smart city. Hence, there is a secure collaboration within all sub-systems in the smart cities, which has triggered the integrated management in this structure. The simulation results are discussed on a typical smart city test system to show the quality of the proposed model.
Mohammad Hossein Chinaei, Taha Hossein Rashidi, S. Travis Waller
Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) has promised to integrate multiple service providers to deliver a multimodal mobility service to commuters through a seamless digital platform. An efficient digital network architecture is imperative to achieve secure and reliable interactions among the involved parties. From the service provider’s perspective, by defining the mobility ownership for customers, MaaScan bring a personalized transport system to complement or even fully replace the concept of private vehicle ownership. This paper paves the initial steps to develop a distributed architecture to realize a MaaS digital network using blockchain technology. Therefore, a comprehensive blockchain-enabled MaaS platform with related industries is illustrated in this paper. To do so, first, we define crypto-tickets as means of ownership of the service and devise a straightforward smart contract to be executed in the blockchain network, which allows the customers to exchange the service ownership in a privacy-preserved manner. Then, we evaluate our blockchain-based ownership scheme’s efficacy against the traditional membership plans using a simplified simulation instance in MATLAB. Finally, we discuss the blockchain potentials in personalizing the ownership of the service, congestion management, and data trading between various stakeholder of a comprehensive MaaS platform.
During the recent COVID-19 (CoV) global outbreak, there is a sharp decline of revenue of on-demand ride-hailing (ODR) platforms because people have serious worries of infection in the shared vehicles. Blockchain, which supports cryptocurrency and creates full traceability of the service history of each car and driver, may come to rescue by allowing the platform to offer only the “safe cars” to consumers. Motivated by the real world challenges associated with the CoV outbreak for the ODR platform, we build game-theoretical models based on the M/M/n queuing system to explore if and how blockchain can help. In the basic model, the ODR platform decides the service price and special hygiene level. Comparing between the cases with and without blockchain, we find that blockchain implementation increases both the service price and hygiene level. In addition, when the consumers’ inherent worry of infection is substantially large, implementing blockchain achieves all-win for the ODR platform, drivers and consumers. In the extended models, we first consider the case when the special hygiene level is determined by the drivers under a mixed-leadership game and then explore the case when customers are risk averse. The main findings about blockchain adoption remain valid in both cases. However, when the drivers take charge of the special hygiene level, both optimal decisions are lower in most cases. It is also important to make efforts to reduce consumers’ feeling volatility toward service valuation for improving the value of blockchain adoption and related performances.