Multi-Channel Blockchain Scheme for Internet of Vehicles

With the development of advanced information and communication technology, the traditional centralized service model alone no longer meets the increasing demand of data exchange in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). While Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technology has been introduced to achieve more advanced ITS, there are still some unsettled issues such as flexibility and fault tolerance. The conventional centralized approach for ITS is vulnerable to the single point of failure, and lack of flexibility due to its dependence on a trusted third party (TTP). The emergence of blockchain technology provides a potential direction to address these problems. However, due to varying vehicle densities, it is challenging to select the best blockchain parameters to satisfy the application requirements. In this paper, we propose a multi-channel blockchain scheme that can use the best parameters in accordance with the vehicle density. The proposed scheme first defines multiple blockchain channels where each channel is optimized for a certain vehicle density level. Then, the system selects the best channel according to the vehicle density, and the application requirements on the transaction throughput and latency. We use extensive simulations to show that the proposed blockchain scheme achieves a significantly better performance as compared with existing baselines.