TRUCON: Blockchain-Based Trusted Data Sharing With Congestion Control in Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of vehicles (IoV) has a substantial impact on traffic efficiency improvement and accidents avoidance. Due to restricted resources, vehicles must share observed data with RSUs and other vehicles to execute some time-tolerant computing tasks. However, data provided by vehicles cannot always be trusted due to the presence of attackers. Fake messages could have catastrophic ramifications, such as vehicle collisions. Furthermore, extensive data sharing might cause channel congestion, resulting in the loss of vital messages during delivery. To overcome the aforementioned issues, we propose TRUCON, a blockchain-based trusted data sharing mechanism with congestion control in IoV. Firstly, we propose a Kademlia algorithm-based traffic data forwarding method to control channel congestion state. By adjusting the bucket size and distance threshold, source vehicles can limit the number of reference vehicles forwarded. Secondly, we present a cuckoo filter-based traffic data deduplication and discrimination approach. To avoid repetitive sharing, vehicles and RSUs can check their local filters to verify if the current data report has been shared. Based on the foregoing, we propose a blockchain-based trust management mechanism with congestion control. RSUs serve as full nodes while vehicles are light nodes in the blockchain. Finally, we develop a trust management prototype system with congestion control that incorporates both on-chain and off-chain parts. It signifies that our scheme is both feasible and effective.