In Internet of Vehicles (IoV), data sharing among vehicles for collaborative analysis can improve the driving experience and service quality. However, the bandwidth, security and privacy issues hinder data providers from participating in the data sharing process. In addition, due to the intermittent and unreliable communications in IoV, the reliability and efficiency of data sharing need to be further enhanced. In this paper, we propose a new architecture based on federated learning to relieve transmission load and address privacy concerns of providers. To enhance the security and reliability of model parameters, we develop a hybrid blockchain architecture which consists of the permissioned blockchain and the local Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Moreover, we propose an asynchronous federated learning scheme by adopting Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for node selection to improve the efficiency. The reliability of shared data is also guaranteed by integrating learned models into blockchain and executing a two-stage verification. Numerical results show that the proposed data sharing scheme provides both higher learning accuracy and faster convergence.
Zhuo Ma, Junwei Zhang, Yongzhen Guo, Yang Liu · 6 authors
The vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has been considered as one of the most prominent technologies for improving the efficiency and safety of modern transportation systems. However, VANET will present a unique range of challenges and opportunities for security. In particular, key management, as the footstone to build a practical security framework in VANET, becomes a research hotspot. In this paper, we investigate key management based on blockchain for VANET. We first propose an efficient decentralized key management mechanism for VANET with blockchain (DB-KMM) to automatically realize the registration, update and revocation of user's public key. At the same time, we present a lightweight mutual authentication and key agreement protocol based on the bivariate polynomial. Then, we analyze the security of DB-KMM in the universally composable framework and show that the mechanism can prevent the typical attacks including internal attacks, DoS attacks, public key tampering attacks and collusion attacks. Finally, we analyze the performance of the proposed scheme through experiments and simulation. Experiment results show that DB-KMM has better performance than the existing schemes in terms of communication, storage, computation overhead and latency.
Although vehicular global positioning system (GPS) has been widely applied in many traffic scenarios, it is far from achieving lane-level positioning due to its low accuracy. Existing cooperative positioning (CP) methods have improved vehicular positioning accuracy to varying degrees, which still have challenges in further improving the system's robustness and security. In this article, we propose a novel framework of blockchain-enabled Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with CP for improving vehicular GPS positioning accuracy, system robustness, and security. First, a self-positioning correction scheme for the intelligent vehicles is proposed to improve their positioning accuracy, which uses the multitraffic signs as benchmarks to correct the vehicular position (given by GPS) by deep neural network (DNN) algorithm. We further design a multi-intelligent vehicle positioning error sharing model to reduce GPS positioning error of common vehicles (CoVs) in the same segment or area. In addition, to realize information sharing between vehicles and ensure system security, the connections among intelligent vehicles, CoVs, and roadside units are built by proposing a blockchain-enabled architecture that includes IoV subsystem and blockchain subsystem, where the corresponding mechanism of the information choosing, information sharing, and penalty is designed. Extensive simulation results show the accuracy, robustness, and security of our proposal in terms of vehicular positioning, information transferring, and sharing.
There has been an increasing trend of moving computing activities closer to the edge of the network, particularly in smart city applications (e.g., vehicle-to-everything - V2X). Such a paradigm allows the end user's requests to be handled/processed by nodes at the edge of the network; thus, reducing latency, and preserving privacy of user data/activities. However, there are a number of challenges in such an edge computing ecosystem. Examples include (1) potential inappropriate utilization of resources at the edge nodes, (2) operational challenges in cache management and data integrity due to data migration between edge nodes, particularly when dealing with vehicular mobility in a V2X application, and (3) high energy consumption due to continuous link breakage and subsequent reestablishment of link(s). Therefore in this paper, we design a blockchain-based secure data processing framework for an edge envisioned V2X environment (hereafter referred to as BloCkEd). Specifically, a multi-layered edge-enabled V2X system model for BloCkEd is presented, which includes the formulation of a multi-objective optimization problem. In addition, BloCkEd comprises an optimal container-based data processing scheme, and a blockchain-based data integrity management scheme, designed to minimize link breakage and reducing latency. Using Chandigarh City, India, as the scenario, we implement and evaluate the proposed approach in terms of its latency, energy consumption, and service level agreement compliance.
While enjoying the convenience brought by Location Based Service (LBS), the location privacy of vehicles in VANET may be disclosed. Distributed k-anonymity, as one of the most popular privacy protection methods, fails to take the trustworthiness of participants into account, resulting in malicious tracing of vehicles, which further leads to the sensitive information leakage, and even the safety threat of personal property. To address this issue, we propose a blockchain enabled trust-based location privacy protection scheme in VANET. Specifically, by analyzing the different requirements of the request vehicle and the cooperative vehicle during the process of constructing the anonymous cloaking region, as well as combining the characteristics of these two roles, we devise the trust management method based on Dirichlet distribution, such that both the requester and the cooperator will only cooperate with the vehicles they trust. Moreover, by employing blockchain, we also proposed the data structure to record the trustworthiness of vehicles on publicly available blocks timely, so that any vehicle can access the historical trust information of counterparties whenever necessary. Finally, the construction process of anonymous cloaking region is presented. Security analysis and extensive experiments indicate that the proposal is resilient to various trust model attacks, it can effectively detect the malicious vehicles, and preserve the location privacy of vehicles in the anonymous cloaking region construction, while the required time delay is limited.
As a trending and interesting research topic, in recent years, researchers have been adopting the blockchain in the wireless ad-hoc environment. Owing to its strong characteristics, such as consensus, immutability, finality, and provenance, the blockchain is utilized not only as a secure data storage for critical data but also as a platform that facilitates the trustless exchange of data between independent parties. However, the main challenge of blockchain application in an ad-hoc network is which kind of nodes should be involved in the validation process and how to adopt the heavy computational complexity of block validation appropriately while maintaining the genuine characteristics of a blockchain. In this paper, we propose the blockchain-based trust management system with a lightweight consensus algorithm in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). The proposed scheme provides the distributed trust framework for routing nodes in MANETs that is tamper-proof via blockchain. The optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR) is exploited as a representative protocol to embed the blockchain concept in MANETs. As a securely distributed and trusted platform, blockchain solves most of the security issues in the OLSR, in which every node is performing the security operation individually and in a repetitive manner. Additionally, using predefined principles, the routing nodes in the proposed scheme can collaborate to defend themselves from the attackers in the network. The experimental results show that the proposed consensus algorithm is suitable to be used in the resource-hungry MANET with reduced validation time and less overhead. Meanwhile, the attack detection overhead and time also decrease because the repetitivity of the process is reduced while providing a scalable and distributed trust among the routing nodes.
Hong Liu, Pengfei Zhang, Geguang Pu, Tao Yang · 6 authors
The dynamic environment due to traffic mobility and wireless communication from/to vehicles make identity authentication and trust management for privacy preservation based on vehicular edge computing (VEC) an increasingly important problem in vehicular networks. However, existing authentication schemes mainly focus on communication between a single trusted edge computing node and multiple vehicles. This framework may suffer the bottleneck problem due to the single edge computing node, and the performance depends heavily on its resources. In this paper, a blockchain empowered group-authentication scheme is proposed for vehicles with decentralized identification based on secret sharing and dynamic proxy mechanism. Sub-authentication results are aggregated for trust management based blockchain to implement collaborative authentication. The edge computing node with a higher-reputation stored in the tamper-proof blockchain can upload the final aggregated authentication result to the central server to achieve the decentralized authentication. This work analyzes typical attacks for this scheme and shows that the proposed scheme achieves cooperative privacy preservation for vehicles while also reducing communication overhead and computation cost.
The aim of this paper is to understand whether Distributed Ledger\nTechnologies (DLTs) are ready to support complex services, such as those\nrelated to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In smart transportation\nservices, a huge amount of sensed data is generated by a multitude of vehicles.\nWhile DLTs provide very interesting features, such as immutability,\ntraceability and verifiability of data, some doubts on the scalability and\nresponsiveness of these technologies appear to be well-founded. We propose an\narchitecture for ITS that resorts to DLT features. Moreover, we provide\nexperimental results of a real test-bed over IOTA, a promising DLT for IoT.\nResults clearly show that, while the viability of the proposal cannot be\nrejected, further work is needed on the responsiveness of DLT infrastructures.\n
Changle Li, Yuchuan Fu, F. Richard Yu, Tom H. Luan · 5 authors
The positioning accuracy of the existing vehicular Global Positioning System (GPS) is far from sufficient to support autonomous driving and ITS applications. To remedy that, leading methods such as ranging and cooperation have improved the positioning accuracy to varying degrees, but they are still full of challenges in practical applications. Especially for cooperative positioning, in addition to the performance of methods, cooperators may provide false data due to attacks or selfishness, which can seriously affect the positioning accuracy. By fully exploiting the characteristics of blockchain and edge computing, this paper proposes a vehicular blockchain-based secure and efficient GPS positioning error evolution sharing framework, which improves vehicle positioning accuracy from ensuring security and credibility of cooperators and data. First, by analyzing the GPS error, a bridge can be established between the sensor-rich vehicles and the common vehicles to achieve cooperation by sharing the positioning error evolution at a specific time and location. Particularly, the positioning error evolution is obtained by a deep neural network (DNN)-based prediction algorithm running on the edge server. We further propose to use blockchain technology for storage and sharing the evolution of positioning errors, mainly to guarantee the security of cooperative vehicles and mobile edge computing nodes (MECNs). In addition, the corresponding smart contracts are designed to automate and efficiently perform storage and sharing tasks as well as solve inconsistencies in time scales. Extensive simulations based on actual data indicate the accuracy and security of our proposal in terms of positioning error correction and data sharing.
Carla Fabiana Chiasserini, Paolo Giaccone, Giovanni Malnati, Michele Macagno · 5 authors
Several applications for connected cars leverage the mobility information periodically broadcasted by cars through standard vehicle-to-vehicle messages. We propose an architecture in which each car generates and sends reports including the messages received from its neighbors to the access network infrastructure. The infrastructure collects and stores the received reports through multiple blockchains, each of them referring to a different geographical area. A smart contract is then executed to verify the spatial coherence among the received data. We implement a proof-of-concept of such a solution using Hyperledger Fabric, and we investigate the scalability of our solution in terms of resource consumption in a MEC system.
Flying Ad Hoc networks, (FANETs) in recent years, have actively been used in monitoring landscape, military and mapping terrains. However, with the advent of the emerging concept of smart cities and new business applications, these flying devices and drones have found a new use case in the medical and governance sector. But these networks suffer from the major problem of centralization. Although centralization does provide reliability and efficiency but also poses the threat of a single point of failure. Meanwhile, blockchain widely known for its decentralization is heavily researched and can be utilized in this case to offer a solution to the problem of centralization of FANETs. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a decentralized architecture of flying ad hoc nodes based on blockchain and using Practical byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) for consensus among nodes. By employing PBFT, the architecture is not only computationally efficient and fast. In addition, we have used a gossip protocol for passing messages among nodes. Lastly, we have simulated the working of our model and the experimental results show that the proposed method works with nearly constant throughput and latency while increasing the network size and approximately constant message overhead with increase transaction for given network size.
Abstract The popularity of smart cars is increasing around the world as they offer a wide range of services and conveniences. These smart cars are equipped with a variety of sensors generating a large amount of data, many of which are critical. Besides, there are multiple parties involved in the lifespan of a smart car, such as manufacturers, car owners, government agencies, and third-party service providers who also generate data about the vehicle. In addition to managing and sharing data among these entities in a secure and privacy-friendly way which is a great challenge itself, there exists a trust deficit about some types of data as they remain under the custody of the car owner (e.g. satellite navigation and mileage data) and can easily be manipulated. In this article, we propose a blockchain-assisted architecture enabling the owner of a smart car to create an immutable record of every data, called the autobiography of a car, generated within its lifespan. We also explain how the trust about this record is guaranteed by the immutability characteristic of the blockchain. Furthermore, the article describes how the proposed architecture enables a secure and privacy-preserving mechanism for sharing of smart car data among different parties.
Jan 1, 2020·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Daniel Miehle, Andreas Pfurtscheller, Bernd Bruegge
Current Vehicle-to-Vehicle solutions cannot ensure the authenticity of safety-critical vehicle and traffic data. Moreover, they do not allow malicious vehicles to be detected and eliminated. However, this is becoming mandatory, as more and more vehicles are on the road and communicating with each other. We propose a system called Starling, which focuses on trusted coordinated obstacle mapping using blockchain technology and a distributed database. Starling enables vehicles to share detected obstacles with other vehicles in a secure and verifiable manner, thus improving road safety. It ensures that data was not manipulated, changed, or deleted and is based on an open protocol so that vehicles can exchange data regardless of their manufacturer. In a case study, we demonstrate how a consensus is reached among vehicles and conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the Starling system using Ethereum and the InterPlanetary File System.
Nowadays, commuting by personal vehicles and public road transport is widely common and mostly cost-effective. In this regard, globally there is traffic congestion in megacities and inevitably road collisions take place, which leads to people's injuries and a rise in traffic jams. Many governments are scrambling to decrease the number of accidents and are trying to introduce the latest technologies in the road infrastructure. It might be possible if these technologies are used correctly and reasonably. This paper proposes two blockchain-based accident detection models aiming at improving the ease of law violation detection and related measures. In particular, authors introduce a new technology, called offline-detection, relating to the detection of accidents in the absence of communication and Internet access. Blockchain technology itself may become a solution to improve honesty, openness, and truthfulness in cases of road-related issues. It allows restoring the road situation in details including location, vehicles, and surrounding infrastructure involvement due to blockchain property of immutability.
Road safety continues to be a great concern despite various advances and initiatives. Sweden introduced the SS approach in 1996 as part of a plan to eliminate road fatalities and injuries. Since then, SS has been internationally adopted by the World Health Organization. In this article, we describe how the SS approach offers a holistic structure of various innovative solutions in the context of IoT and ITS. We also introduce a necessary extension to the SS approach considering emerging technologies such as connected and computing vehicles and vehicle autonomy. To facilitate this extension, we show how blockchains can play a crucial role in ensuring road safety, as well as the safety of its connected elements.
With the gradually opening of energy markets and popularization of Electric Vehicles (EVs), EVs can transmit, dispatch and recharge energy in different markets and domains dynamically. However, in Vehicular Energy Network, EVs may randomly enter and leave a market, it imposes a difficult problem in that how to schedule and distribute energy effectively. Additionally, the location of EV owners usually includes sensitive information such as home addresses, company names, hospital traces, and so on, which may be collected by attackers and may result in the privacy leakage about EV owners. In this article, we propose a decentralized blockchain-enabled energy trading scheme that can trade cross over various domains efficiently, which enables reliable transactions between EVs and energy nodes within short processing delay. It can also preserve the privacy of EV owners, by adopting the k-anonymity method in constructing a united request to hide the location information and creating a clocking area based on undirected graphs. Even though the server is maliciously attacked, the attacker cannot distinguish among EV owners, which breaks the linkage between real locations and identities to preserve EV owners' privacy. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive experimental evaluation to evaluate the trading performance and location privacy protection performance. The simulation results show that our proposed architecture outperforms over most state-of-the-art schemes in terms of processing delay and location privacy awareness.
Su Buda, Celimuge Wu, Wugedele Bao, Siri Guleng · 7 authors
In order to enable emerging vehicular Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including fully autonomous driving, more efforts should be done in collecting driving experiences in different road situations. This requires the exchange of information between vehicles as each vehicle has very limited experience. Due to the decentralized feature of vehicular environment, an efficient management of collaborative behaviors among the vehicles becomes particularly important. Blockchain has been attracting great interest recently because it provides a way to reach consensus in decentralized systems. However, existing blockchain systems assume high communication capabilities for vehicles, which is difficult to achieve in a decentralized vehicular environment. Existing studies also assume the existence of networking infrastructure, such as roadside units (RSU). In this paper, we propose a scheme to empower blockchain in vehicular environments without depending on the existing networking infrastructure. The proposed scheme uses a distributed clustering approach to select some vehicles as edge nodes, and the edge nodes maintain the blockchain used to record transactions in a decentralized way. The proposed scheme employs a distributed approach that guides vehicle clustering with the consideration of multiple metrics based on a fuzzy logic algorithm. By using the edge nodes, the proposed scheme solves the communication problem of maintaining a blockchain in a totally decentralized vehicular environment. We use computer simulations to clarify the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of communication performance by comparing it with existing baselines.