The confluence of Internet of Things(IoT) , Blockchain(BC) and Artificial Intelligence(AI) acts as a key accelerator for enabling Machine Economy. To be ready for future businesses these technologies needs to be adapted by extending the IoT capabilities to Economy of Things (EoT) capabilities. In this paper we focus on one such implementation experience for Smart Toll Transaction application in the domain of mobility. Our paper showcases a possible solution by leveraging negotiations, decision making, distributed learning capabilities at the devices level using AI-enabled Multi-Agent Systems and the real-time smart contracts between the Cars and Tolls using Blockchain. This solution also showcases the monetization of real time data coming from various IoT devices which are part of vehicles and infrastructure. While blockchain secures the privacy of the participants it also acts as an economic transactional layer and governance layer between the devices in the network.
This paper explores the potential to reduce the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of offshore wind technology through the use of digitalized financial innovations made possible by Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Specifically, this paper proposed a novel application of DLT to crowdsource project finance for clean energy projects. An introduction to DLT technology and some of its potential applications is provided first. Next, the potential to move from a more centralized, top-down energy system to a more decentralized, two-way transactive energy system enabled by DLT is discussed. Within this new energy system framework, the idea of crowd-sourced equity funding of the capital cost of renewable energy is introduced. The impact of crowdfunded equity on the LCOE is then explored via the creation of a theoretical offshore wind installation off the coast of New Jersey. An existing offshore wind capital cost model is modified for use in the U.S., and an existing wind annual energy production model is utilized to provide inputs into a LCOE model. Finally, the potential impacts that DLT based crowdfunded equity may have on cost of debt, debt tenor, and debt-to-equity ratio are also input into the LCOE model in order to examine the range of potential impacts it may have on offshore wind LCOE.
Owing to the advancement of wireless communication technologies, drivers can rely on smart connected vehicles to communicate with each other, roadside units, pedestrians, and remote service providers to enjoy a large amount of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) services, including navigation, parking, ride hailing, and car sharing. These V2X services provide different functions for bettering travel experiences, which have a bunch of benefits. In the real world, even without smart connected vehicles, drivers as users can utilize their smartphones and mobile applications to access V2X services and connect their smartphones to vehicles through some interfaces, e.g., IOS Carplay and Android Auto. In this way, they can still enjoy V2X services through modern car infotainment systems installed on vehicles. \n \nMost of the V2X services are data-centric and data-intensive, i.e., users have to upload personal data to a remote service provider, and the service provider can continuously collect a user's data and offer personalized services. However, the data acquired from users may include users' sensitive information, which may expose user privacy and cause serious consequences. To protect user privacy, a basic privacy-preserving mechanism, i.e, anonymization, can be applied in V2X services. Nevertheless, a big obstacle arises as well: user anonymization may affect V2X services' availability. As users become anonymous, users may behave selfishly and maliciously to break the functions of a V2X service without being detected and the service may become unavailable. In short, there exist a conflict between privacy and availability, which is caused by different requirements of users and service providers. In this thesis, we have identified three major conflicts between privacy and availability for V2X services: privacy vs. linkability, privacy vs. accountability, privacy vs. reliability, and then have proposed and designed three privacy-preserving mechanisms to resolve these conflicts. \n \nFirstly, the thesis investigates the conflict between privacy and linkability in an automated valet parking (AVP) service, where users can reserve a parking slot for their vehicles such that vehicles can achieve automated valet parking. As an optional privacy-preserving measure, users can choose to anonymize their identities when booking a parking slot for their vehicles. In this way, although user privacy is protected by anonymization, malicious users can repeatedly send parking reservation requests to a parking service provider to make the system unavailable (i.e., "Double-Reservation Attack"). Aiming at this conflict, a security model is given in the thesis to clearly define necessary privacy requirements and potential attacks in an AVP system, and then a privacy-preserving reservation scheme has been proposed based on BBS+ signature and zero-knowledge proof. In the proposed scheme, users can keep anonymous since users only utilize a one-time unlinkable token generated from his/her anonymous credential to achieve parking reservations. In the meantime, by utilizing proxy re-signature, the scheme can also guarantee that one user can only have one token at a time to resist against "Double-Reservation Attack". \n \nSecondly, the thesis investigates the conflict between privacy and accountability in a car sharing service, where users can conveniently rent a shared car without human intervention. One basic demand for car sharing service is to check the user's identity to determine his/her validity and enable the user to be accountable if he/she did improper behavior. If the service provider allows users to hide their identities and achieve anonymization to protect user privacy, naturally the car sharing service is unavailable. Aiming at this conflict, a decentralized, privacy-preserving, and accountable car sharing architecture has been proposed in the thesis, where multiple dynamic validation servers are employed to build decentralized trust for users. Under this architecture, the thesis proposes a privacy-preserving identity management scheme to assist in managing users' identities in a dynamic manner based on a verifiable secret sharing/redistribution technique, i.e. the validation servers who manage users' identities are dynamically changed with the time advancing. Moreover, the scheme enables a majority of dynamic validation servers to recover the misbehaving users' identities and guarantees that honest users' identities are confidential to achieve privacy preservation and accountability at the same time. \n \nThirdly, the thesis investigates the conflict between privacy and reliability in a road condition monitoring service, where users can report road conditions to a monitoring service provider to help construct a live map based on crowdsourcing. Usually, a reputation-based mechanism is applied in the service to measure a user's reliability. However, this mechanism cannot be easily integrated with a privacy-preserving mechanism based on user anonymization. When users are anonymous, they can upload arbitrary reports to destroy the service quality and make the service unavailable. Aiming at this conflict, a privacy-preserving crowdsourcing-based road condition monitoring scheme has been proposed in the thesis. By leveraging homomorphic commitments and PS signature, the scheme supports anonymous user reputation management without the assistance of any third-party authority. Furthermore, the thesis proposes several zero-knowledge proof protocols to ensure that a user can keep anonymous and unlinkable but a monitoring service provider can still judge the reliability of this user's report through his/her reputation score. \n \nTo sum up, with more attention being paid to privacy issues, how to protect user privacy for V2X services becomes more significant. The thesis proposes three effective privacy-preserving mechanisms for V2X services, which resolve the conflict between privacy and availability and can be conveniently integrated into current V2X applications since no trusted third party authority is required. The proposed approaches should be valuable for achieving practical privacy preservation in V2X services.
Muhammad Salek Ali, Massimo Vecchio, Fabio Antonelli
Abstract Within internet of things (IoT) research, there is a growing interest in leveraging the decentralization properties of blockchains, towards developing IoT authentication and authorization mechanisms that do not inherently require centralized third-party intermediaries. This paper presents a framework for sharing IoT data in a decentralized and private-by-design manner in exchange for monetary services. The framework is built on a tiered blockchain architecture, along with InterPlanetary File System for IoT data storage and transfer. The goal is to enable IoT data users to exercise fine-grained control on how much data they share with entities authenticated through blockchains. To highlight how the framework would be used in real-life scenarios, this paper presents two use cases, namely an IoT data marketplace and a decentralized connected vehicle insurance. These examples showcase how the proposed framework can be used for varying smart contract-based applications involving exchanges of IoT data and cryptocurrency. Following the discussion about the use cases, the paper outlines a detailed security analysis performed on the proposed framework, based on multiple attack scenarios. Finally, it presents and discusses extensive evaluations, in terms of various performance metrics obtained from a real-world implementation.
Real-time traffic monitoring is a fundamental mission in a smart city to understand traffic conditions and avoid dangerous accidents. In this article, we propose a reliable and efficient traffic monitoring system that integrates blockchain and the Internet of Vehicles technologies effectively. It can crowdsource its tasks of traffic information collection to vehicles that run on the road instead of installing cameras in every corner. First, we design a lightweight blockchain-based information trading framework to model the interactions between traffic administration and vehicles. It guarantees reliability, efficiency, and security during executing trading. Second, we define the utility functions for the entities in this system and come up with a budgeted auction mechanism that motivates vehicles to undertake the collection tasks actively. In our algorithm, it not only ensures that the total payment to the selected vehicles does not exceed a given budget but also maintains the truthfulness of the auction process that prevents some vehicles from offering unreal bids for getting greater utilities. Finally, we conduct a group of numerical simulations to evaluate the reliability of our trading framework and performance of our algorithms, whose results demonstrate their correctness and efficiency perfectly.
The transparency and visibility engendered in Distributed Ledger Technology allows, for the first time, disparate stakeholders to agree on common resource existence, ownership, and rules of exchange, while keeping the coordination costs comparatively low with respect to earlier methods. This infrastructure can finally facilitate a self-organising market mechanism, where people can decide upon the market rules themselves and potentially self-select into any particular marketplace dependent upon their personal beliefs and preferences. Reinventing the apparatus of the economy upon shared distributed infrastructure may finally allow the emergence of actual shared ownership, unlike the existing systems where short-term rentals or access-based consumption are often confused with sharing and social exchange.
As the most successful application of the sharing economy, ride-hailing service is popular worldwide and serves millions of users per day worldwide. Ride-hailing service providers (SPs) usually collect users’ personal data to improve their services via big data technologies. However, SPs may also use the collected user data to apply personalized prices to different users, which raises price fairness concerns. In this paper, we propose a smart price auditing system named Spas. Spas allows a user to purchaseFair Price Insurancein the form ofPrice Auditing Contract, then the price of ride-hailing service (RHS) order will be audited automatically once completed. According to the auditing result, the contract punishes misbehaving SPs and also compensates affected users automatically. By replacing an untrustworthy centralized auditor with carefully designed smart contracts, we construct a decentralized price auditing system which is trustworthy and transparent. We demonstrate a theoretical model for practical payment flows based on real RHS user data and we implement Spas in Hyperledger Fabric to show that decentralizing and automating price auditing for RHS with financial incentives is technically feasible.
Ella Tallyn, Joe Revans, Evan Morgan, Dave Murray-Rust
This paper presents GeoPact, an assembly of technological objects that materialises location-aware smart contracts using internet of things and digital ledger technologies. Such contracts may facilitate the creation of distributed systems and services for transport and logistics that are locally constructed and adaptable, thus supporting specific community needs and sustainable objectives. However the technological infrastructures that underpin these systems are complex, making it difficult to engage publics in design processes. GeoPact grounds infrastructure in relatable physical activities, that are linked with holistic views of the system, and creates new experiences for public engagement. In these activities participants were invited to roleplay as couriers, and to progress through delivery scenarios which were governed by smart contracts. Participants and spectators were then encouraged to discuss their reactions, concerns and ideas. This paper illustrates the GeoPact assembly and reflects on our engagement activities.
Recent advances in distributed ledger technologies enable new types of decentralized governance and financing for technology platforms. In this paper, we analyze the current state-of-the-art in platform financing and propose a novel way to sustainably finance decentralized technology platforms using a blockchain-based token economy. We design and develop a token model and demonstrate its usefulness for financing the Open Charging Network, an electric vehicle charging platform governed by the Share&Charge foundation. Based on a multi-method simulation approach, we evaluate our token economy model and show, that it can provide sustainable financing for a technology platform with decentralized governance.
The rapid increase of the world’s urbanization process has been improving citizens’ quality of living. Combining new technologies of smart government, smart healthcare, smart transportation and other services under a framework of smart city minimizes urbanization challenges. However, these services demand a large data technology to support the infrastructure of smart cities. It is a major benefit to using blockchain technology as a framework to integrate multiple technologies of smart city such as Internet of Thing, big data platforms and smart transportation to enhance the automation, security and decentralization of smart city services. However, querying the blockchain to retrieve a transaction record is one of the major limitations of blockchain systems. The operation requires scanning blockchain ledger searching for results. In this paper, we utilized different smart contract designs to support indexing and querying the blockchain for ride sharing data. Our experiments evaluate the complexity of two smart contract designs, Catalog and Sparse smart contracts for indexing and retrieving data from the blockchain
Xiaomin Du, Yang Gao, Chia‐Huei Wu, Rong Wang · 5 authors
The purpose of this study is to explore how to apply blockchain technology to intelligent transportation, create a hierarchical theoretical framework of intelligent transportation, and explore a sustainable application system of intelligent transportation under the blockchain. However, not only this hierarchical theoretical framework must consider unnecessary attributes and the interrelationships between the aspects and the criteria, but also the sustainable application system must be in consideration in multiple stakeholders. Hence, fuzzy set theory is used for screening out the unnecessary attributes, a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is proposed to manage the complex interrelationships among the aspects and attributes, and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to divide the hierarchy and construct a hierarchical theoretical framework. Finally, the research develops a sustainable GCU application system for intelligent transportation under the blockchain. The results show that (1) solving social problems is the primary link, (2) economic tasks are mainly focused on smart contracts and affected by the social problems, (3) the continuous improvement of environmental issues requires a solution to social problems, and (4) the application system of blockchain in intelligent transportation needs to be built from three levels including the government layer, the company layer, and the user layer. This theoretical hierarchical framework aims to guide intelligent transportation toward the application of blockchain. This study also proposes the engagement of stakeholders for establishing a sustainable application system.
Muhammad Umar Javed, Nadeem Javaid, Abdulaziz Aldegheishem, Nabil Alrajeh · 6 authors
In this work, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are charged using a new and improved charging mechanism called the Mobile-Vehicle-to-Vehicle (M2V) charging strategy. It is further compared with conventional Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V) charging strategies. In the proposed work, the charging of vehicles is done in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) manner; the vehicles are charged using Charging Stations (CSs) or Mobile Vehicles (MVs) in the absence of a central entity. CSs are fixed entities situated at certain locations and act as charge suppliers, whereas MVs act as prosumers, which have the capability of charging themselves and also other vehicles. In the proposed system, blockchain technology is used to tackle the issues related with existing systems, such as privacy, security, lack of trust, etc., and also to promote transparency, data immutability, and a tamper-proof nature. Moreover, to store the data related to traffic, roads, and weather conditions, a centralized entity, i.e., Transport System Information Unit (TSIU), is used. It helps in reducing the road congestion and avoids roadside accidents. In the TSIU, an Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) is used to store the data in a secured manner after removing the data’s redundancy through data filtration. Furthermore, four different types of costs are calculated mathematically, which ultimately contribute towards calculating the total charging cost. The shortest distance between a vehicle and the charging entities is calculated using the Great-Circle Distance formula. Moving on, both the time taken to traverse this shortest distance and the time to charge the vehicles are calculated using real-time data of four EVs. Location privacy is also proposed in this work to provide privacy to vehicle users. The power flow and the related energy losses for the above-mentioned charging strategies are also discussed in this work. An incentive provisioning mechanism is also proposed on the basis of timely delivery of credible messages, which further promotes users’ participation. In the end, simulations are performed and results are obtained that prove the efficiency of the proposed work, as compared to conventional techniques, in minimizing the EVs’ charging cost, time, and distance.
This paper evaluates the suitability of blockchain technology for the Article 6.2 carbon market mechanism of the Paris Agreement. The bottom-up approach of the Paris Agreement causes challenges to the robust accounting of mitigation outcomes and information asymmetry, both of which result from a high number of heterogeneous emission accounting systems. Blockchain is an innovative technology that can act as an aggregation platform for these fragmented systems while enhancing transparency and automating accounting processes. However, this new technology is not a panacea for all problems, and the trade-offs of applying blockchain technology need to be assessed case by case. We create and apply an eight-step decision framework for testing the applicability of the technology for the Paris Agreement Article 6.2 carbon market mechanism. The analysis shows that, under current mechanism specifications, a blockchain application can enhance transparency and increase automation, thereby eliminating information asymmetry. We outline a system architecture that allows the linking of the heterogeneous systems, the integration of an Article 6.2 exchange mechanism, and the progress tracking of climate targets. This blockchain architecture offers national Parties the opportunity to co-create a decentralised system in line with the bottom-up ethos of the Paris Agreement.
Byeong-Gyu Jeong, Taek-Young Youn, Nam-Su Jho, Sang Uk Shin
Currently, "connected cars" are being actively designed over smart cars and autonomous cars, to establish a two-way communication network between the vehicle and all infrastructure. Additionally, because vehicle black boxes are becoming more common, specific processes for secure and efficient data sharing and transaction via vehicle networks must be developed. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain-based vehicle data marketplace platform model, along with a data sharing scheme, using Blockchain-based data-owner-based attribute-based encryption (DO-ABE). The proposed model achieves the basic requirements such as data confidentiality, integrity, and privacy. The proposed system securely and effectively handles large-capacity and privacy-sensitive black box video data by storing the metadata on Blockchain (on-chain) and encrypted raw data on off-chain (external) storage, and adopting consortium Blockchain. Furthermore, the data owners of the proposed model can control their own data by applying the Blockchain-based DO-ABE and owner-defined access control lists.
Muhammad Sohaib Iftikhar, Nadeem Javaid, Omaji Samuel, Muhammad Shoaib · 5 authors
A large amount of data is involved in an effective and timely exchange of traffic information between vehicles in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), which ensures efficiency and reliability. VANETs assist in sharing traffic information effectively and timely to improve traffic efficiency and reliability. However, less storage capability and selfish behavior of the vehicles are important issues that need to be tackled. Moreover, traditional storage mechanisms require the involvement of third parties, which are insecure, untrustworthy, non-transparent, and unreliable. To overcome these issues, we proposed a blockchain-based data storage scheme for VANETs by exploiting the benefits of the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), which is deployed on Road Side Units (RSUs). Furthermore, RSUs are able to receive the aggregation packet comprising of the event information acquired from the vehicles. After receiving and verifying the aggregation packet, the RSU stores the event's information in IPFS and the reputation values of vehicles in blockchain. Moreover, we proposed an incentive mechanism in this work, in which monetary incentives are given to the repliers who agree with the vehicle regarding the event information. The incentives are given by the initiator after verifying the signatures of the repliers. All the transactions involved in the incentive process are stored in blockchain. The simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme in terms of transaction cost and storage savings in VANETs.
Yunshu Liu, Zhixuan Fang, Man Hon Cheung, Wei Cai · 5 authors
Miners in a blockchain system are suffering from the ever-increasing storage costs, which in general have not been properly compensated by the users' transaction fees. In the long run, this may lead to less participation of miners and jeopardize the blockchain security. In this paper, we study the economics of blockchain storage and identify the incentive issues related to this storage cost problem. More specifically, we model the interactions among users (who generate transactions) and miners in two stages, where the users set the transaction fees in Stage 1, and the miners select which transactions to include in Stage 2. Through characterizing the Nash equilibrium of the two-stage game, we find that the transaction fees indeed cannot cover the storage costs under the current practice in general, due to the negative externality and the unfair delay-based pricing. We also identify that a longer block interval can alleviate the concern by raising the transactions fees at the expense of larger delay.
Emanuel Vieira, Paulo Bartolomeu, Seyed M. Hosseini, Joaquim Ferreira
The extensive use of smartphones combined with the rise in the Internet of Things adoption has fostered the emergence of several use-cases to provide added comfort and peace of mind in our everyday life. Public transportation payment in large cities, where frequent commuters and generic users often spend a significant amount of time buying and validating tickets, can become a cumbersome process. This paper presents the design and implementation of a seamless payment system named IOTApass, which handles payments through the usage of a smartphone and a distributed ledger technology to avoid the limitations of centralized payment solutions. The IOTApass enables a user to seamlessly pay for public transports using a smartphone App without explicit (user) interface interactions, thus reducing payment complexity. Besides describing the architecture, operation, and implementation of IOTApass, the paper documents its experimental validation and confirms its feasibility.
Blockchain based applications benefit from decentralization, data privacy, and anonymity. However, they may suffer from inefficiency due to underlying blockchain. In this paper, we aim to address this limitation while still enjoying the privacy and anonymity. Taking the blockchain based crowdsourcing system as an example, we propose a new smart contract based cyber-insurance framework, which can greatly shorten the delay, and enable the workers to obtain the economic compensation for increased security risk caused by a conflict between the need to provide service quickly and delay in payment. We model the process of determining insurance premium and number of confirmations as a Stackelberg Game and prove the existence of Stackelberg Equilibria, at which the utility of the requester is maximized, and none of the workers can improve its utility by unilaterally deviating from its current strategy. The experimental results show that our framework can definitely improve the time efficiency of crowdsourcing. Particularly, it takes on average only 33% of the time required by the naive blockchain based crowdsouring solution for time-sensitive cases.
Jun 1, 2020·2020 17th International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology (ECTI-CON)
Our research aims to study, design and build the electronic payment system for electric vehicle (EV) charging using blockchain and smart contract technologies. Both technologies are used to control and manage payments and to decentralize the payment system, so the devices can automatically pay each other. In addition, our system lessens the inadequate of charging station for EV when travel in the long distance because our proposed let EV owners who also have charging facilities at their homes share their facilities and automatically get paid. Blockchain node is set up in charging station and is controlled by the application for EV owners. The application can show the charging information and control the payment and charging process automatically. For EV part, we simulated the data transmission between charging station and EV.
Mamoona Humayun, N. Z. Jhanjhi, Bushra Hamid, Ghufran Ahmed
Transportation and logistics management play a vital role in the development of a country. With the advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, smart transportation is becoming a reality. However, these abundant connected IoT devices are vulnerable to security attacks. Recently, Blockchain has emerged as one of the most widely accepted technologies for trusted, secure and decentralized intelligent transportation systems. This research study aims to contribute to the field of logistics and transportation by exploring the potential of IoT and Blockchain technology in smart logistics and transportation. We propose a layered framework, namely BCTLF, for smart logistics and transportation that integrates IoT and Blockchain to provide an intelligent logistics and transportation system. Finally, we present two real-life IoT and Blockchain-based case studies to highlight the contribution of IoT and Blockchain in logistics and transportation.