VaCoChain: Blockchain-Based 5G-Assisted UAV Vaccine Distribution Scheme for Future Pandemics

This paper proposes a generic scheme VaCoChain, that fuses blockchain (BC) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) underlying fifth-generation (5G) communication services for timely vaccine distribution during novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and future pandemics. The scheme offers 5G-tactile internet (5G-TI) based services for UAV communication networks (UAVCN) monitored through ground controller stations (GCs). 5G-TI enabled UAVCN supports real-time dense connectivity at ultra-low round-trip time (RTT) latency of < 1 ms and high availability of 99.99999%. Thus, it can support resilient vaccine distributions in a phased manner at government-designated nodal centers (NCs) with reduced round trip delays from vaccine production warehouses (VPW). Further, UAVCNs ensure minimizes human intervention and controls vaccine health conditions due to shorter trip times. Once vaccines are supplied at NCs warehouses, then the BC ensures timestamped documentation of vaccinated persons with chronology, auditability, and transparency of supply-chain checkpoints from VPW to NCs. Through smart contracts (SCs), priority groups can be formed for vaccination based on age, healthcare workers, and general commodities. In the simulation, for UAV efficacy, we have compared the scheme against fourth-generation (4G)-assisted long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) channels, and traditional logistics for round-trip time (RTT) latency, logistics, and communication costs. In the BC setup, we have compared the scheme against the existing 5G-TI delivery scheme (Gupta et al.) for processing latency, packet losses, and transaction time. For example, in communication costs, the proposed scheme achieves an average improvement of 9.13 for block meta-information. For 4000 transactions, the proposed scheme has a communication latency of 16 s compared to 36 s. The packet loss is significantly reduced to 2.5% using 5G-TI compared to 16% in 4G-LTE-A. The proposed scheme has a computation cost of 1.6 ms and a communication cost of 157 bytes, which indicates the scheme efficacy against conventional approaches.

Automated summary

The proposed VaCoChain scheme integrates blockchain and unmanned aerial vehicles as the basis for fifth-generation communication services, enabling timely vaccine distribution during pandemics with efficient communication networks support while ensuring transparency and traceability in the supply chain.