Blockchain-Enabled Certificate-Based Authentication for Vehicle Accident Detection and Notification in Intelligent Transportation Systems

As the communications among the vehicles, the Road-Side Units ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RSU</i> ) and the Edge Servers ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ES</i> ) take place via wireless communication and the Internet, an adversary may take the opportunity to tamper with the data communicated among various entities in an Internet of Vehicles (IoV) environment. Therefore, it demands secure communication among the involved entities in an IoV-based Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) deployment. In this work, we design a new blockchain-enabled certificate-based authentication scheme for vehicle accident detection and notification in ITS, called BCAS-VADN. In BCAS-VADN, through the authentication process, each vehicle can securely notify accident related transactions to its nearby Cluster Head ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CH</i> ), if an accident is detected on roads either by its own or neighbor vehicle(s). The <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CH</i> then securely sends the transactions received from the vehicles to its <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RSU</i> and subsequently, these transactions are also received securely by the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ES</i> s. The <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ES</i> is responsible for preparing partial block containing transactions and Merkle tree root, and a digital signature on those information, and then forwarding to its associated Cloud Server ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">CS</i> ) in the Blockchain Center ( <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BC</i> ) for complete block creation, verification and addition of the block using the designed consensus process. Due to blockchain technology usage, it is shown that BCAS-VADN is not only secure against various potential attacks, but also maintains transparency, immutability and decentralization of the information. Furthermore, a comprehensive comparative analysis reveals that BCAS-VADN achieves better security and more functionality attributes, and has low communication and computational overheads as compared to other competitive authentication schemes in IoV. In addition, the practical demonstration using the blockchain technology has been also provided.