Reliable and Secure X2V Energy Trading Framework for Highly Dynamic Connected Electric Vehicles

Vehicle-to-vehicle energy trading has become one of the most popular charge-sharing systems nowadays. It allows energy transfer between electric vehicles without being necessarily relied on infrastructure-based charging stations. However, the demands-offers matching and energy transportation between the vehicles remain challenging issues while considering vehicles- space and temporal location, their dynamicity, availability, and reliability. This paper addresses these issues by proposing a framework of energy trading based on blockchain and smart contracts. The energy transfer between vehicles is performed via a distributed coalition of unmanned aerial vehicles transporting the electric energy from selected sellers to a needy requester vehicle. The selection mechanism of sellers aims to maximize the service availability and fault-tolerance and minimize both the energy transportation latency and overhead. We modeled the selection process by a 0-1 knapsack problem, which we relaxed using a dynamic protocol of energy negotiation, and then developed a linear approach for its resolution. The seller reliability assessment is addressed by the proposition of a trust management approach, which evaluates over time the quality of participants regarding their history of transactions. We conducted intensive simulations with a comparison to the exact solution of resolution. The obtained results show a reduction of 42% of charging latency, an improvement of 24% of service availability, a 96% of approximation from the exact resolution, and an increase of up to 62% of robustness against unfulfilled commitments.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a framework of energy trading based on blockchain and smart contracts, which uses unmanned aerial vehicles to transfer energy from sellers to requester vehicles. The selection mechanism and trust management approach are designed to optimize service availability and reliability. Simulation results show significant improvements in charging latency, service availability, and robustness.