Blockchain for the Internet of Vehicles: A Decentralized IoT Solution for Vehicles Communication Using Ethereum

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 20; no. 14; p. 3928
• Main Authors: Jabbar, Rateb, Kharbeche, Mohamed, Al-Khalifa, Khalifa, Krichen, Moez, Barkaoui, Kamel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 15.07.2020; MDPI
• Subjects: Automobiles; automotive communication; Blockchain; Communication; Computer Science; Digital currencies; Efficiency; ethereum; Infrastructure; intelligent transport system; Intelligent transportation systems; Internet of Things; Internet of Vehicles; Peer to peer computing; Privacy; Remote control; Sensors; Smart cities; Software; Vehicles; ethereum; security; internet of things; blockchain; automotive communication; cloud and android; intelligent transport system; internet of vehicles
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s20143928

The concept of smart cities has become prominent in modern metropolises due to the emergence of embedded and connected smart devices, systems, and technologies. They have enabled the connection of every “thing” to the Internet. Therefore, in the upcoming era of the Internet of Things, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) will play a crucial role in newly developed smart cities. The IoV has the potential to solve various traffic and road safety problems effectively in order to prevent fatal crashes. However, a particular challenge in the IoV, especially in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications, is to ensure fast, secure transmission and accurate recording of the data. In order to overcome these challenges, this work is adapting Blockchain technology for real time application (RTA) to solve Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications problems. Therefore, the main novelty of this paper is to develop a Blockchain-based IoT system in order to establish secure communication and create an entirely decentralized cloud computing platform. Moreover, the authors qualitatively tested the performance and resilience of the proposed system against common security attacks. Computational tests showed that the proposed solution solved the main challenges of Vehicle-to-X (V2X) communications such as security, centralization, and lack of privacy. In addition, it guaranteed an easy data exchange between different actors of intelligent transportation systems.