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Blockchain for the Internet of Vehicles towards Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Survey

Muhammad Baqer Mollah, Jun Zhao, Dusit Niyato, Yong Liang Guan, Chau Yuen, Sumei Sun, Kwok-Yan Lam, Leong Hai Koh

arXiv:2007.06022v2cs.CRcs.NIcs.SI

TL;DR

IoV must securely manage large-scale, heterogeneous data exchanged among mobile vehicles and surrounding entities for intelligent transportation. This survey reviews blockchain-based IoV applications, architectures, challenges, and future directions, reporting quantitative performance improvements in one reviewed approach and identifying unresolved integration issues.

  • Problem

    IoV generates enormous data while mobility, low latency, heterogeneity, and interoperability challenge traditional management; blockchain adoption also faces performance, security, and connectivity issues.

  • Method

    The paper conducts a systematic and comprehensive survey of blockchain integration with IoV, reviewing applications, architectures, challenges, and future research opportunities.

  • Results

    40.16% energy savings and 82.06% fewer transactions than the traditional approach are reported for one reviewed quantitative approach.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    Blockchain-enabled IoV is surveyed as a basis for decentralized management, security, immutability, availability, trust, and automation in ITS-related applications.

Abstract

from arXiv · show

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an emerging concept that is believed to help realise the vision of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). IoV has become an important research area of impactful applications in recent years due to the rapid advancements in vehicular technologies, high throughput satellite communication, Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems. IoV enables the integration of smart vehicles with the Internet and system components attributing to their environment such as public infrastructures, sensors, computing nodes, pedestrians and other vehicles. By allowing the development of a common information exchange platform between vehicles and heterogeneous vehicular networks, this integration aims to create a better environment and public space to the people as well as to enhance safety for all road users. Being a participatory data exchange and storage, the underlying information exchange platform of IoV needs to be secure, transparent and immutable in order to achieve the intended objectives of ITS. In this connection, the adoption of blockchain as a system platform for supporting the information exchange needs of IoV has been explored. Due to their decentralized and immutable nature, IoV applications enabled by blockchain are believed to have a number of desirable properties such as decentralization, security, transparency, immutability, and automation. In this paper, we present a contemporary survey on the latest advancement in blockchain for IoV. Particularly, we highlight the different application scenarios of IoV after carefully reviewing the recent literatures. We also investigate several key challenges where blockchain is applied in IoV. Furthermore, we present the future opportunities and explore further research directions of IoV as a key enabler of ITS.

I. INTRODUCTION

This survey examines blockchain integration with IoV to support future ITS, addressing IoV’s data-management and interoperability challenges through applications, architectures, and open research issues.

  • IoV connects smart vehicles with Internet, infrastructure, sensors, computing nodes, pedestrians, and other vehicles for ITS.
  • IoV’s enormous data volumes, mobility, low latency, context complexity, and heterogeneity challenge traditional cloud-based storage and management.
  • The survey investigates blockchain integration with IoV, covering preliminary technologies, motivations, applications, architectures, and future research opportunities.
  • The survey focuses on vehicular data security, vehicle management, on-demand transportation services, and blockchain architectures combined with edge computing and privacy-preserving techniques.
  • It identifies security and privacy, performance, IoV-specific consensus, incentive mechanisms, and broader open issues as key research challenges.
  • Previous surveys addressed blockchain in IoT, CPS, IIoT, and Industry 4.0, but lacked coverage of blockchain specifically in IoV.

A. Blockchain Technology

Blockchain is presented as a distributed ledger that enables trusted transactions among untrusted entities through cryptography, consensus, data structures, and smart contracts.

  • Blockchain links cryptographically protected blocks containing transactions, records, and scripts into a distributed ledger maintained by network participants.
  • Blockchain’s four key techniques are cryptography, consensus, structure, and smart contract.
  • Consensus mechanisms establish agreement on one valid block version without a trusted entity, resolving forks and network conflicts.
  • Cryptographic hashes connect blocks and support immutability, while digital signatures provide authentication and non-repudiation.

V. Blockchain for IoV Architectures and Frameworks

The paper situates blockchain-enabled IoV architectures within interconnected cyber-physical transportation systems that combine vehicles, communications, infrastructure, cloud, and edge resources.

  • Blockchain architectures incorporate automotive systems, cloud and edge computing, privacy-preserving techniques, and related communication technologies.
  • Edge computing processes data and stores information near sources, supporting location-aware, low-latency, real-time services and reducing cloud bandwidth use.
  • Edge nodes are distributed alongside roads in IoV and ITS to improve service quality while considering mobility.
  • Smart vehicles combine computational and storage units, control units, software, firmware, sensors, and wireless devices.
  • IoV is an extended cyber-physical system connecting vehicles, people, and infrastructure through communication technologies.
  • IoV ecosystems include smart vehicles, V2X communication, roadside units, and cloud platforms.

III. MOTIVATIONS OF THIS SURVEY

This section outlines IoV’s distinctive characteristics and the challenges they create for communication, data management, interoperability, and security in ITS. It then motivates examining blockchain as a response to these challenges.

  • IoV context: IoV integrates rapidly developing vehicular technologies with Internet-connected smart vehicles to support future intelligent transportation systems.The ecosystem includes heterogeneous devices, networks, infrastructures, and users.
  • Challenges: Security, privacy, trust, transparency, connectivity, and performance are inter-related challenges that increase with IoV connectivity.The integration of IoV with existing Internet technologies opens these challenges.
  • Challenges: High mobility and diverse vehicle speeds make stable communication and deployment of computational and communication resources difficult.Vehicles connect with numerous peers while moving through heterogeneous environments.
  • Challenges: Heterogeneous wireless technologies and devices require seamless integration and interoperability across IoV components.Examples of wireless technologies include Bluetooth, mmWave, and DSRC.
  • Challenges: Latency-critical applications require short propagation delays, especially for emergency and safety-related communications.Information exchange may need to occur within stipulated time limits to help avoid unexpected situations such as accidents.

B. Motivations of Using Blockchain in IoV

Blockchain is presented as a potential foundation for IoV services because its decentralized, cryptographic, immutable, peer-to-peer, and programmable properties address trust, security, data-management, and intermediary-dependence concerns. The survey organizes blockchain-enabled IoV applications around data security, vehicle management, and on-demand transportation services.

  • Motivations: Blockchain is considered suitable for IoV because real-time, mobile scenarios generate large data volumes and introduce distinctive attack vectors.The survey frames blockchain as a potential response to limitations of classic techniques in these settings.
  • Motivations: Decentralization allows RSUs, vehicles, and people to manage IoV operations independently rather than relying on central decisions.The paper associates this shift with simplified network operation and enhanced vehicular-service experiences.
  • Motivations: Blockchain and smart contracts can remove cloud-like storage dependencies and third-party intermediaries from vehicular services and transactions.Participants can maintain services and transactions themselves, potentially reducing operational costs.
  • Motivations: Replication, synchronization, cryptography, and chained hashes support resilience, security, privacy, immutability, tamper prevention, and auditing.Smart contracts can also enforce predefined rules or scripts.
  • Motivations: Peer-to-peer blockchain networks enable direct data and resource sharing between vehicles and RSUs without intermediaries, supporting low-latency services.The paper identifies this as useful for secure IoV data and resource exchange.
  • Motivations: Consensus mechanisms and smart contracts establish trust and automate decisions among heterogeneous entities that may not trust one another.The survey identifies these mechanisms as enabling independent system operation.
  • Survey scope: The survey reviews blockchain-enabled IoV applications in vehicular data security, vehicle management, and on-demand transportation services.It also highlights architectures integrating blockchain with edge computing, vehicular communications, automotive technologies, and privacy-preserving techniques.

RSU RSU

This section reviews blockchain-based data and resource trading or sharing in IoV. The surveyed approaches use consortium or permissioned blockchains, smart contracts, reputation mechanisms, and edge or device-to-device computing to improve trust, security, privacy, and resource use.

  • Data and resource trading: Vehicular data and resource trading faces access-control, privacy, denial-of-service, jamming, disruption, and trust concerns.Mobility and wireless links make trading vulnerable to malicious or unintentional attacks.
  • Data and resource trading: Blockchain is proposed as a secure, peer-to-peer, decentralized basis for trading data and resources among multiple IoV entities.The surveyed motivation is to address transparency, traceability, unauthorized modification, and trust concerns.
  • Data and resource trading: The framework uses a consortium blockchain with local aggregators to support secure and efficient peer-to-peer vehicular data trading.Its stated targets include transparency, traceability, and preventing unauthorized data modification.
  • Data and resource trading: The platform uses a broker to allocate traded computing resources and support truthful bids between sellers and buyers in edge-cloud systems.The broker identifies traded resource amounts and models a pricing process.
  • Resource sharing: D2D-ECN combines blockchain, smart contracts, edge computing, and device-to-device communication for resource trading and task assignment.It targets computationally intensive and latency-aware applications, using swarm intelligence for task assignment and proof-of-reputation instead of PoW.
  • Resource sharing: Resource-sharing schemes use reputation-based consensus and blockchain to establish trust, protect security and privacy, and encourage vehicles to share spare or idle resources.Parkingchain additionally uses a permissioned chain, DBFT consensus, and contract-theoretic incentives for parked vehicles.

D. Vehicle Management

Blockchain-based vehicle management addresses centralized-system concerns in smart parking, platooning, ride sharing, and carpooling. The reviewed systems emphasize decentralized coordination, privacy protection, authentication, matching, and auditable records.

  • Vehicle management: Smart parking and vehicle platooning are identified as two prominent vehicle-management applications.Platooning groups vehicles under a leading platoon head and maintains short spacing among members.
  • Vehicle management: Centralized vehicle-management systems become complicated at scale and create privacy and participation concerns among vehicles, users, parking owners, and RSUs.The paper presents blockchain as a way to address these centralized-management problems.
  • Smart parking: A blockchain-based parking scheme supports decentralized advance booking while reducing the need to reveal private information such as destination data.The paper also identifies centralized availability attacks and data leakage as parking-system concerns.
  • Vehicle platooning: A blockchain-assisted urban IoV model organizes autonomous vehicles into platoons to support automatic driving and intelligent transportation.The described platooning application targets long-distance cargo transportation using trucks.
  • Ride sharing: Ride sharing can reduce traffic congestion, vehicle numbers, and carbon emissions, but centralized cloud services introduce communication delays and privacy-disclosure risks.These concerns motivate efficient, secure, and privacy-preserving alternatives.
  • Ride sharing: Blockchain-based ride-sharing and carpooling systems support community-driven autonomous-vehicle fleets, collaborative service providers, privacy-preserving matching, conditional privacy, and auditable records.FICA uses fog nodes and a private proof-of-stake blockchain to store carpooling records in a verifiable ledger.

F. Contents Broadcasting

Blockchain-assisted IoV content broadcasting supports peer-to-peer vehicle communications for commercial, emergency, and service-related information. The reviewed proposals combine blockchain with smart contracts, edge computing, and 5G to improve trust, auditability, privacy, and responsiveness.

  • Contents Broadcasting: Blockchain can support efficient, inexpensive, and trustworthy peer-to-peer content sharing through V2V and V2I communications.It can also enable reward schemes to accelerate content broadcasting.
  • Contents Broadcasting: A decentralized advertisement-publishing scheme uses blockchain, smart contracts, Merkle trees, and zero-knowledge proofs to address security, privacy, and fairness.
  • Contents Broadcasting: Blockchain-based emergency data message proposals provide distributed storage and auditability, while edge computing processes warnings locally to reduce response time.5G is considered for scalable, low-latency services.
  • Contents Broadcasting: Vehicle-generated traffic and accident information can support dynamic traffic management, condition monitoring, and congestion mitigation.
  • Contents Broadcasting: Blockchain-supported traffic control is designed to provide decentralized management, availability, automaticity, and immutability for secure signaling and road safety.The reviewed traffic-signal approach also uses credit tokens for service usage and misuse.
  • Contents Broadcasting: Blockchain forensic frameworks use smart contracts and permissioned blockchain with VPKI to investigate vehicle accidents and retain vehicle-related records.

I. Remarks

The survey organizes blockchain-assisted IoV applications and distinguishes potential application scenarios from integrated architectures and frameworks. It identifies broad research and industry interest while noting that surveyed application papers describe potential uses rather than industrialized implementations.

  • Remarks: Blockchain-assisted IoV applications are grouped into eight categories, including data management, trading, sharing, vehicle management, ride sharing, broadcasting, traffic control, and forensics.
  • Remarks: Blockchain for IoV is attracting academic and industrial attention, including anticipated mobility-service and automotive-industry applications.
  • Remarks: The survey separates papers covering potential blockchain-enabled IoV applications from subsequent architectures and frameworks that integrate blockchain with IoV.
  • Remarks: Representative integrated architectures combine blockchain with distributed storage, security management, edge computing, vehicular communication, energy exchange, and privacy-preserving techniques.
  • Remarks: One EV architecture uses separate energy and data coins within hybrid cloud-edge computing for energy and information interactions.

C. Blockchain-Centric Automotive System Architecture

Blockchain-centric IoV architectures distribute data, control, and privacy functions across vehicles, roadside infrastructure, cloud or edge nodes, and organizational participants. Their designs include clustered overlay management, hierarchical sub-chains, and specialized blockchain structures.

  • Blockchain-Centric Automotive System Architecture: A smart-vehicle architecture forms an overlay network among vehicles, equipment manufacturers, and service providers, with cluster heads managing transactions and verifying blocks.This removes dependency on centralized control while vehicles retain privacy-sensitive data locally.
  • Blockchain-Centric Automotive System Architecture: A decentralized IoV architecture combines vehicles, sensors, actuators, roadside units, and cloud nodes, using blockchain data and ratings to establish trust levels.
  • Blockchain-Centric Automotive System Architecture: InterChain and IntraChain divide data exchange between external IoV entities and in-vehicle sensors, actuators, and people, providing access-control flexibility.
  • Blockchain-Centric Automotive System Architecture: Delegated Proof-of-Stake and multi-weight reputation are used to make blockchain lighter for resource-constrained entities and reduce internal collusion.
  • Remarks: The surveyed architectures are not expected to reach industrial or practical usage unless their transaction throughput supports IoV applications and services.
  • Remarks: Blockchain integration also faces deployment challenges because IoV and other nonmonetary IoT domains differ from the monetary applications for which blockchain was initially introduced.

VI. BLOCKCHAIN & IOV INTEGRATION CHALLENGES

The survey identifies security and privacy, performance, consensus, and related deployment requirements as major challenges for blockchain-enabled IoV. Proposed responses include privacy-preserving cryptography, optimized transaction handling, learning-based performance control, and IoV-specific consensus mechanisms.

  • Security and Privacy: Blockchain provides immutability but cannot by itself guarantee security and privacy; cryptography, pseudonyms, and off-chain storage are also needed.
  • Security and Privacy: Privacy-preserving blockchain proposals address forged-message dissemination, remote attestation, traceability, non-repudiation, and searchable encryption for vehicular environments.
  • Security and Privacy: Existing cloud-oriented authentication mechanisms may not provide secure, reliable communication or optimal QoS in highly mobile, latency-sensitive, decentralized vehicular networks.
  • Security and Privacy: A lightweight policy-driven signature scheme controls participation in private and permissioned blockchain transactions through policy sets.
  • Performance: Blockchain-enabled IoV must handle massive data and transactions under vehicle mobility while meeting latency, energy, throughput, and scalability requirements.
  • Performance: 40.16% energy savings and 82.06% fewer transactions were reported for a distributed clustering approach compared with the traditional one.
  • Performance: Deep reinforcement learning is used to improve scalability by selecting block producers and adjusting block size and interval time according to vehicle distributions.
  • IoV-specific and Optimized Consensus: IoV deployment challenges for cryptocurrency-derived consensus include block validation, security, reward and penalty schemes, and energy consumption.

D. Incentive Mechanisms

Blockchain-based IoV incentive mechanisms encourage contributions such as validation, data production, and storage. Reviewed approaches use pricing, reputation, and trust controls to improve participation, security, and efficiency.

  • IoV blockchain activities depend on contributions including block verification, validation, data production, and storage, making incentives important for participation.
  • BSIS uses pricing theory to schedule vehicle charging and discharging, maximizing vehicle utilities while pursuing regional energy balance.
  • BSIS combines permissioned blockchain with proof of reputation, selecting validators by reputation to enhance blockchain security.
  • A separate incentive scheme targets internal collusion in delegated PoS vehicle-data sharing by addressing malicious validation and reward-seeking behavior.
  • Restricting vehicles with low trust values from generating messages is intended to increase trustworthiness and efficiency among connected vehicles.
  • The survey identifies security and privacy, performance, optimized consensus, and incentives as key blockchain-IoV challenges, alongside open research opportunities.
  • Future work includes efficient verifiable computing to validate blockchain processing performed by potentially untrusted edge nodes outside vehicles’ trust domains.

B. PKI for Blockchain-Enabled IoV

PKI supports identity, encryption, and signature verification in permissioned blockchain-IoV systems, but certificate and registration authorities create latency, availability, and scalability concerns. The survey therefore discusses privacy protections and further approaches, including smart contracts and differential privacy.

  • PKI binds device, person, and entity identities to public keys used for encryption and digital-signature verification through certificate authorities.
  • Permissioned blockchain-IoV scenarios rely on PKI, and prior studies use it in blockchain-assisted vehicular applications.
  • Classic PKI can cause latency, availability, and scalability issues because vehicles depend on certificate and registration authorities.
  • Smart contracts are proposed as a way to place certificate issuance and verification authorities near vehicles while maintaining trust and low-latency communication.
  • IoV applications sharing driving information and locations face privacy concerns because malicious users may infer vehicle locations and behaviors.
  • Blockchain pseudonyms and cryptographic techniques can hide vehicle identities and protect transaction privacy.
  • Cryptographic privacy approaches may require key management, substantial computation, and performance sacrifices, motivating exploration of differential privacy.
  • Differential privacy adds noise to datasets or real-time data and perturbs location and identity to balance accuracy with privacy.

D. Exploring other Blockchain-Assisted IoV Applications

The survey identifies additional blockchain-assisted IoV applications, including road safety, auctions, and content caching, while emphasizing unresolved mobility, connectivity, resource-sharing, pricing, and trust challenges. Its conclusion frames blockchain-IoV integration as a broad research area for future ITS.

  • Blockchain and smart contracts are presented as applicable beyond reviewed IoV scenarios because of decentralization, autonomy, and security benefits.
  • Blockchain-assisted road-safety applications could use real-time vehicular data and nearby RSUs to record hazards and inform other vehicles.
  • Vehicular big-data auctions face processing-cost and insider- or outsider-threat concerns, for which blockchain with smart contracts is proposed as a solution.
  • Content caching on RSUs and vehicles can reduce backhaul dependence, lower latency, and improve user experience as data traffic increases.
  • Blockchain can support content caching through lightweight cached-content headers and incentive-oriented smart contracts for cache contributors.
  • Blockchain remains difficult to adapt to IoV because mobile vehicles frequently encounter poor and unstable wireless connections.
  • Open questions concern collaborative resource aggregation, fair profit distribution, pricing, stable links, trust, malicious entities, and proper incentive quantification.
  • The survey systematically examines blockchain-IoV applications, incorporated technologies, functionalities, four key challenges, and blockchain-enabled architectures and frameworks.
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