The Internet of Drones (IoD) ecosystem consists of many interlinked commercial services provided by a network of drones. The advent of 6G networks plays a crucial role in increasing the feasibility of the IoD ecosystem. This ecosystem's sheer size and low computational efficiency create challenges in maintaining compliance and control. The 6G IoD ecosystem can incorporate a blockchain-based multi layered compliance and control system to solve the significant trust and authentication issues. Implementing authentication mechanisms and UAV-user identity data in the blockchain layer can preserve the integrity of these authentication mechanisms. This paper proposes a novel Multi Layered Blockchain assisted 6G Internet of Drones (MLB-IoD) ecosystem that augments the IoD ecosystem with secure control and compliance mechanisms. The MLB-IoD ecosystem consists of the novel Global Compliance System (GCoS) and the Swarm Security (SSe) system as its constituents. The GCoS assures drone takeoff compliance and optimally permissible route planning, while the SSe system provides intelligent swarm access control mechanisms. The analysis of the proposed MLB-IoD ecosystem reveals it to be highly secure against authentication based and cryptological attacks. Further, the simulation results show that the location-compliance based path planning module in the GCoS reduces the average flight time for UAVs by 18.37%.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the various solutions and recommendations provided by researchers in applying the blockchain concept to different problems in aviation industry. It will discuss and highlight the specific approaches that leverages blockchain to mitigate the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) security issues. Furthermore, it introduces an innovative design and method to secure ADS-B data using a tamper-resistant distributed public ledger of authenticated flight plans and validates the position and other parameters of the associated aircraft identifier against the flight paths/routes that are stored in the blockchain ledger. Design/methodology/approach ADS-B is the key technology that is mandated by Federal Aviation Administration in USA by 2020. However, ADS-B data is neither encrypted nor authenticated. This paper proposes a novel solution using blockchain to secure the ADS-B data communications and in-depth analysis of existing solutions covering the following aspects: classification of various possible attacks on ADS-B. Presents various solutions proposed by different researchers regarding use of blockchain in aviation industry. Discuss a new solution to secure ADS-B using blockchain. Discuss the high-level architectural framework of the proposed and patented solution. Finally, presents the conclusions and future work scope. Findings While the main intention of this paper is to bring together all the existing solutions using blockchain to secure aviation and ADS-B data at one place, the proposed novel solution could contribute to maintaining security and privacy for aircrafts flying in the airspace at any point in time. Continuously securing the ADS-B data transmissions based upon the filed flight plans in real time can provide a mechanism to identify spoofed aircraft messages and communicate the same to ground stations for authentication of existence of such a malicious aircraft. Thus, this solution also differs from all the existing ones. Practical implications As aviation industry is in its infancy stage in implementing blockchain-based solutions, practical implementation of the proposed concept might take longer. Originality/value This paper is a comprehensive survey and review paper. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first of its kind that presents various use cases for usage of blockchain in aviation industry along with a detailed review of existing proposed or implemented solutions using blockchain to secure ADS-B data. This can serve as an invaluable reference for the future researchers on this topic in both industry and academia.
Yu Han, Xiaolei Wang, Yi Zhang, Gang Yang · 5 authors
In the context of the development of UAVs towards clustering, intelligence, and autonomy, it is necessary to ensure that multiple UAVs and ground control stations can communicate and share information securely in real-time so that UAV swarms can make real-time and effective decisions and collaborations. These factors pose challenges to the security, robustness, and operational efficiency of UAV swarm communication networks. This paper combines blockchain technology with a UAV swarm communication network, proposes a new UAV swarm communication network architecture based on consortium blockchain, and describes the network structure and transaction process in detail. The performance analysis shows that the security mechanism of the architecture can meet the security requirements of the UAV swarm communication network. And this solution is superior to existing solutions based on blockchain technology such as Ethereum in performance and is a technical solution with both security and usability.
In this paper, a blockchain-based trusted authentication model is proposed to secure the civil aviation ground-to-air communication. Considering the limited bandwidth and high latency of ground-air communication, the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used to store avionics equipment information and server equipment information before the plane takes off. Through hash calculation, a unique hash value is obtained as the identity credential for each communication to authenticate. Obtain the key and address of each entity from Ethereum, and realize the registration of avionics system and server information by designing and writing Ethereum smart contracts, as well as the creation of certificates for the avionics system. During the flight, each ground-air communication needs to be signed with a private key for the sent information, and the public key is uploaded to the blockchain trusted storage. In addition, the server authenticates the signature and the result of the interplanetary file system query, and the smart contract authenticates the certificate to ensure that only avionics devices in the trusted domain with verified certificates can take up normal ground-to-air communication between the ground server and the onboard server. The simulation experimental results show that the model can achieve secure ground-to-air communication with low communication overhead and achieve trusted authentication of the avionics devices in communication.
Aiming at solving the challenges of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), such as privacy sensitive data exposing, data being vulnerable to unauthorized access and tampered with and the single point of failure of the cloud server, this paper introduces a blockchain-enabled data access method based on attribute-based encryption. To enhance the privacy protection, the attributes are hidden and all generated transactions are recorded on the blockchain for auditing. Even if it is untrusted to a third party, it can guarantee the user’s control over his own data. To reduce the computation cost, decentralized edge nodes jointly maintain the blockchain and assist users with limited resources to complete most of the calculations. Meanwhile, the use of smart contracts not only reduces the verification workload, but also evaluates multiple factors such as the communication range, communication time, and calculation overhead of the roadside unit (RSU) to ensure that the vehicle can receive messages in a timely manner. In addition, timely updating the attributes can reduce the user’s computational burden and increase the flexibility of the system. Numeral experiments to show the proposed scheme has many advantages of over others such as the storage cost, the whole time consume of the proposed algorithms and the proxy computation cost.
Xiaotong Zhou, Debiao He, Muhammad Khurram Khan, Wei Wu · 5 authors
Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have potential applications in improving the efficiency and safety for intelligent transportation systems. The openness of VANETs, however, also introduces privacy and security implications. Despite a number of conditional privacy-preserving authentication (CPPA) schemes with anonymity and conditional traceability have been designed for VANETs, a majority of these schemes cannot be directly applied to a real-world setting (e.g., due to the need for a certificate manager for issuing keys in PKI-based solutions, or the inherent key escrow problem in ID-based solutions). There have also been attempts to design blockchain-based CPPA schemes, but these schemes may not support key revocation or are inefficient (e.g., due to on-chain operations). This paper proposes an efficient blockchain-based CPPA (EBCPPA) scheme, which is designed to mitigate the above limitations. Our proposal consists of two key building blocks, namely: signature of knowledge and smart contract. To evaluate the feasibility, we present the security and performance analyses of EBCPPA. Specifically, the performance evaluations show that EBCPPA is more efficient than other existing state-of-the-art solutions, in terms of signing (improving at least 49.71%), the verification (improving at least 32.84%) and bandwidth requirement (reducing at least 27.59%).
Eranda Harshanath Jayatunga, Avishek Nag, Anca Delia Jurcut
With the advancement of fifth-generation cellular systems (5G) and the already provoked research on the sixth-generation cellular systems (6G), stringent functional requirements are growing to facilitate more reliable vehicular communication systems. The progressive needs of V2X communications include obtaining cooperative sensing data in real-time, then analyze and use them in the decision-making process that greatly enhances driving security, traffic quality, infotainment facilities, etc. However, the traditional V2X communications are not capable of providing all these necessities. Moreover, the lack of trust among heterogeneous, massive sets of participants in V2X networks at present may hamper those activities with frequent privacy violations and other irreversible consequences. Hence, the blockchains are applied to assure the accountability and integrity among network participants. On the other hand, the integrated edge layer today consists of Macro BS (MBSs), Small BS (SBSs), Road Side Units (RSUs), and 5G Radio Access Networks (RANs) which are geo-distributed and installed with independent storage facilities. As a result, revolutionary blockchain platforms can be easily accommodated to 5G Mutiaccess Edge Computing (MEC). This allows to apply fast and efficient consensus mechanism for block verification while preventing backhaul congestion by offloading computation at the cloud. Therefore, efficient New Radio (NR) access technology, core network capabilities, and edge-cloud services are needed to reach the full convergence of V2X networks while blockchain can be used to solve major related security vulnerabilities ranging from data privacy leakage, cyber-attacks, and access control to security breaches leading to extremely advanced data theft. Hence, in this research paper, an attempt was made to discuss some existing blockchain integrated architectures in diverse V2X communications by paving the path to develop more robust security mechanisms with 5G enabling technologies,
As a part of the intelligent transportation system, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) provide timely information about road events and traffic to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. However, VANETs face many challenges, such as attacks from malicious vehicles, identity privacy leakage, and the absence of trust between vehicular nodes. In addition, vehicles nearby an event usually lack the motivation to participate in the traffic event validation whenever it occurs, which requires the cooperation of vehicles on the network. To solve these problems, a blockchain-enabled incentive trust model with a privacy-preserving threshold ring signature scheme for VANETs is proposed. Firstly, a threshold ring signature scheme is designed in order to allow participants in the non-trusted environment to anonymously witness the message's authenticity and reliability while guaranteeing the vehicle's privacy. Second, a blockchain-enabled incentive trust management model is presented to enable the roadside units (RSUs) to thwart various attacks and guarantee the trustworthiness of event messages transmitted in VANETs and also motivate the senders of the traffic information and their witnesses with incentives. Finally, to improve efficiency, a practical Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism is used. Our proposed system is demonstrated to be effective and secure for VANETs, according to both security analysis and performance evaluation.
The purpose of this exploration of blockchain in vehicle management based on Digital Twins in Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) is to further improve intelligent transportation in smart cities. In view of the complexity of pedestrians in the real road network, the Digital Twins (DTs) technology is used to map the traffic situation in the real road network to the virtual space. Furthermore, the concrete interaction of vehicle data information is stored and transmitted by using blockchain technology. Finally, the DTs model of vehicle-mounted Ad Hoc network based on blockchain is constructed, and its performance is analyzed by simulation. The results suggest that the model algorithm adopted in this work shows a lower average delay time, its data message delivery rate is basically stable at 80%, the data message leakage rate is basically stable at approximately 10%, and the communication overhead does not exceed 700 bytes. Therefore, the in-vehicle self-organizing network model constructed in this work shows high network security performance while ensuring low latency performance, enabling information to interact more efficiently. Therefore, it can provide an experimental basis for the intelligent development and safety performance improvement of the transportation field of smart cities.
Internet of Things (IoT)-inspired drone environment is having a greater influence on daily lives in the form of drone-based smart electricity monitoring, traffic routing, and personal healthcare. However, communication between drones and ground control systems must be protected to avoid potential vulnerabilities and improve coordination among scattered UAVs in the IoT context. In the current paper, a distributed UAV scheme is proposed that uses blockchain technology and a network topology similar to the IoT and cloud server to secure communications during data collection and transmission and reduce the likelihood of attack by maliciously manipulated UAVs. As an alternative to relying on a traditional blockchain approach, a unique, safe, and lightweight blockchain architecture is proposed that reduces computing and storage requirements while keeping privacy and security advantages. In addition, a unique reputation-based consensus protocol is built to assure the dependability of the decentralized network. Numerous types of transactions are established to characterize diverse data access. To validate the presented blockchain-based distributed system, performance evaluations are conducted to estimate the statistical effectiveness in the form of temporal delay, packet flow efficacy, precision, specificity, sensitivity, and security efficiency.
Paola Torrico Morón, Salma Salimi, Jorge Peña Queralta, Tomi Westerlund
Systems for relative localization in multi-robot systems based on ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging have recently emerged as robust solutions for GNSS-denied environments. Scalability remains one of the key challenges, particularly in ad-hoc deployments. Recent solutions include dynamic allocation of active and passive localization modes for different robots or nodes in the system. With larger-scale systems becoming more distributed, key research questions arise in the areas of security and trustability of such localization systems. This paper studies the potential integration of collaborative-decision making processes with distributed ledger technologies. Specifically, we investigate the design and implementation of a methodology for running an UWB role allocation algorithm within smart contracts in a blockchain. In previous works, we have separately studied the integration of ROS2 with the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain, and introduced a new algorithm for scalable UWB-based localization. In this paper, we extend these works by (i) running experiments with larger number of mobile robots switching between different spatial configurations and (ii) integrating the dynamic UWB role allocation algorithm into Fabric smart contracts for distributed decision-making in a system of multiple mobile robots. This enables us to deliver the same functionality within a secure and trustable process, with enhanced identity and data access management. Our results show the effectiveness of the UWB role allocation for continuously varying spatial formations of six autonomous mobile robots, while demonstrating a low impact on latency and computational resources of adding the blockchain layer that does not affect the localization process.
False messages sent by malicious or selfish vehicle nodes will reduce the operation efficiency of the Internet of Vehicles, and can even endanger drivers in serious cases. Therefore, it is very important to detect malicious vehicle nodes in the network in a timely manner. At present, the existing research on detecting malicious vehicle nodes in the Internet of Vehicles has some problems, such as difficulties with identification and a low detection efficiency. Blockchain technology cannot be tampered with or deleted and has open and transparent characteristics. Therefore, as a shared distributed ledger in decentralized networking, blockchain can promote collaboration between transactions, processing and interaction equipment, and help to establish a scalable, universal, private, secure and reliable car networking system. This paper puts forward a block-network-based malicious node detection mechanism. Using blockchain technology in a car network for malicious node identification algorithm could create a security scheme that can ensure smooth communication between network vehicles. A consensus on legal vehicle identification, message integrity verification, false message identification and malicious vehicle node identification form the four parts of the security scheme. Based on the public–private key mechanism and RSA encryption algorithm, combined with the malicious node identification algorithm in the Internet of Vehicles, the authenticity of the vehicle’s identity and message is determined to protect the vehicle’s security and privacy. First, a blockchain-based, malicious node detection architecture is constructed for the Internet of vehicles. We propose a malicious node identification algorithm based on the blockchain consensus mechanism. Combined the above detection architecture with the consensus mechanism, a comprehensive and accurate verification of vehicle identity and message authenticity is ensured, looking at the four aspects of vehicle identification, accounting node selection, verification of transmission message integrity and identification of the authenticity of transmission messages. Subsequently, the verification results will be globally broadcast in the Internet of Vehicles to suppress malicious behavior, further ensure that reliable event messages are provided for the driver, improve the VANET operation environment, and improve the operation efficiency of the Internet of Vehicles. Comparing the proposed detection mechanism using simulation software, the simulation results show that the proposed blockchain-based trust detection mechanism can effectively improve the accuracy of vehicle node authentication and identification of false messages, and improve network transmission performance in the Internet of Vehicles environment.
The number of internet-connected devices has been exponentially growing with the massive volume of heterogeneous data generated from various devices, resulting in a highly intertwined cyber-physical system. Currently, the Edge Intelligence System (EIS) concept that leverages the merits of edge computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is utilized to provide smart cloud services with powerful computational processing and reduce decision-making delays. Thus, EIS offers a possible solution to realizing future Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), especially in a vehicular network framework. However, since the central aggregator server supervises the entire system orchestration, the existing EIS framework faces several challenges and is still potentially susceptible to numerous malicious attacks. Hence, to solve the issues mentioned earlier, this paper presents the notion of secure edge intelligence, merging the benefits of Federated Learning (FL), blockchain, and Local Differential Privacy (LDP). The blockchain-assisted FL approach efficiently improves traffic prediction accuracy and enhances user privacy and security by recording transactions in immutable distributed ledger networks and providing a decentralized reward mechanism system. Furthermore, LDP is empowered to strengthen the confidentiality of data sharing transactions, especially in protecting users' private data from various attacks. The proposed framework has been implemented in two scenarios, i.e., blockchain-based FL to efficiently develop the decentralized traffic management for vehicular networks and LDP-based FL to produce randomized privacy protection using the IBM Library for differential privacy.
In the context of the social Internet of vehicles (SIoV), constructing reliable social relationships between dynamic and distributed entities is a challenging research problem. Rating-based reputation systems have been widely applied to assist human users in evaluating the honesty of target entities. However, the ratings in SIoV expose user privacy, including behavior, location, etc., which are required to be protected properly. Meanwhile, the blockchain technology with its distributed paradigm is potentially employed to protect information privacy. In this study, we propose the design of a blockchain-enabled reputation system named “VRepChain” for SIoV by especially considering the rating privacy issue. In our design, the ratings' privacy is strongly preserved in the processes of transmission and storage. The reputation of a vehicle is constructed based on the ratings with the agreement of the rating providers, ensuring the ratings are never abused by any other unauthorized entities during the usage process. Through experiments, the proposed system is demonstrated to improve the effectiveness of vehicles in terms of arriving at their destinations in a faster speed. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the constructed reputation model with untruthful ratings is extensively examined, showing its robustness and practicality in realistic applications.
Data sharing is essential for future autonomous vehicles in vehicular networks. Building trust in the shared data can be challenging among mutually unknown vehicles in an open and distributed environment. Blockchain is the key to establish trusted data sharing in a decentralized vehicular environment. However, the low efficiency (e.g., transaction per second, TPS) of blockchain is the bottleneck for the efficient data sharing. Moreover, the highly dynamic topology, the imperfect wireless links, and the limited radio coverage may further slow down the blockchain consensus process. To improve the efficiency and trustworthiness of data sharing in a vehicular network, we propose a sharding-enabled vehicular blockchain system. Specifically, the blockchain-enabled vehicles are dynamically allocated to different shards based on their geographical locations so that transactions are processed in parallel. We design an efficient and trusted sharding-enabled blockchain consensus mechanism by integrating a reputation-assisted intra-shard consensus and a vehicle-assisted inter-shard consensus. The reputation assistance in intra-shard consensus is designed to defend against the collusive false-block attack that may happen in a small-scale shard environment. The vehicle-assisted inter-shard consensus is designed to tackle the issues caused by defective roadside units (RSUs). Simulation results demonstrate the improved performance on efficiency and trustwor-thiness of the proposed system. In addition, trusted data sharing can be established even under the conditions of malicious vehicles or attacked RSUs.
Yuzheng Ren, Renchao Xie, F. Richard Yu, Tao Huang · 5 authors
Recently, the Internet of vehicles (IoV) and connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) have become research hotspots. The accuracy and efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) models are crucial for CAVs to make decisions automatically. Intelligence networking enables each CAV to train appropriate models locally with the help of other CAVs' intelligence and make up for the lack of experience and computing power of a single-vehicle. However, intelligence is distributed across diverse geo-locations in the intelligence networking paradigm, which calls for accurate, efficient, and lightweight intelligence discovery mechanisms. In this article, we propose a non-fungible token (NFT)-based distributed intelligence networking scheme (NDIN) for CAVs. We use NFT to tokenize intelligence and efficiently describe intelligence from multiple aspects through meta-data, facilitating applications to better understand and search for intelligence in complex and trust-lacking IoV. We present the architecture, modules, and core mechanism of NDIN. Then, we formulate the essential problem as a discrete Markov decision process (MDP) and adopt the quantum-inspired reinforcement learning (QRL) algorithm to find the optimal policy. Also, the convergence rate and performance compared with existing schemes are evaluated. Finally, we discuss several related challenges and opportunities.
Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is an enhanced application which mainly aims towards the curation of smart and interconnectivity services to ease the existing transportation systems. It is a field with a plethora of future possibilities so as to provide efficient and advanced techniques by solving and tackling the existing challenges and problems. Especially in cities and countries which aim towards developing smart cities, ITS plays an essential role in advancing the transportation sector with regards to the city. Using a number of AI and ML techniques, a variety of approaches, algorithms and techniques can be put to effective utilization to boost the ITS ecosystem. However, with every boon compliment few banes and plausible bottlenecks. One of the major concerns while using V2V networks is the privacy and security issue. The data being transferred amidst vehicles mainly caters to the status updates on the vehicles adjacent to it, the speed, and driver's information in case of any accidents or wherever required. In such cases, the privacy of the drivers details and personal information are at stake and often poses a major security challenge. Furthermore, there are chances of data breaches and similar attacks by malicious users which can lead to huge data loss and tampering of data. A possible solution to this problem is to approach it through the perspective of Blockchain. Blockchain is a concept of sharing information/ data in a distributed and decentralized manner. The numerous blocks present in a blockchain which are responsible for storing information do so by encrypting and securing the data and hence can be integrated with a V2V system for overcoming the privacy and security challenges.