Branch based blockchain technology in intelligent vehicle

Intelligent vehicle (IV) is an internet-enabled vehicle, commonly referred to as a self-driving car, which enables vehicles-to-everything communications. This communication environment is not secure and has several vulnerabilities. The major issues in IV communication are trustworthiness, accuracy, and security of received and broadcasted data in the communication channel. In this article, we introduce blockchain technology to build trust and reliability in peer-to-peer networks with topologies similar to IV communication. Further, we propose a blockchain-technology-enabled IV communication use case. Blockchain technology is used to build a secure, trusted environment for IV communication. This trusted environment provides a secure, distributed, and decentralized mechanism for communication between IVs, without sharing their personal information in the intelligent transportation system. Our proposed method comprises of a local dynamic blockchain (LDB) and main blockchain, enabled with a secure and unique crypto ID called intelligent vehicle trust point (IVTP). The IVTP ensures trustworthiness among vehicles. Vehicles use and verify the IVTP with the LDB to communicate with other vehicles. For evaluation, we simulated our proposed blockchain technology-based IV communication in a common intersection deadlock use case. The performance of the traditional blockchain is evaluated with emphasis on real-time traffic scenarios. We also introduce LDB branching, along with a branching and un-branching algorithm for automating the branching process for IV communication. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.