Transportation is considered the backbone of cities. It offers crucial services for the movement of people, goods and services. On the other hand, due to the rising demand for transportation, expanding urbanization severely strains the mobility infrastructure. The most significant difficulty in many cities throughout the world is usually claimed to be traffic congestion, which also contributes to other traffic problems including accidents on the road. Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have emerged, which solve the issue of mobility infrastructures by enabling cars to interact with one another and transmit safety alerts. This makes it possible for automobiles to receive messages about impeding traffic problems and make judgments accordingly.
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) expands this concept and evolves as a paradigm shift from the conventional VANETs by involving various network entities communicating using different types of network protocols including IEEE 802.11p WAVE standard, WiMax, 4G/LTE and 5G. Smart transportation is one of the IoV’s evolutionary applications, and it acts as a catalyst for the development of smart cities. Smart transportation allows vehicles and infrastructures to be embedded with various sensors and assisting technologies to enable data dissemination of safety messages about the environment around cities, which plays a significant role in the development of urbanization by enhancing the safety and efficiency of citizens’ transportation means.
To develop applications for IoV in smart transportation, a secure and effective data distribution mechanism is essential. When a substantial quantity of data is anticipated to be created and disseminated over the network, the usage of centralized storage and management systems imposes serious issues due to the rising number of cars in cities. IoV’s high mobility, low latency, and heterogeneity characteristics, however, might put undue strain on centralized administration since they could provide bottleneck problems when it comes to managing IoV environments. Additionally, the system as a whole can fail if the central server has a problem.
The transportation strategies that were previously developed and put into practice are no longer enough to deal with the ever-growing traffic issues of today due to the sharp rise in vehicle numbers over the past 20 years, despite significant infrastructure upgrades. Integration of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) is now more important than ever. The main goals of ITS are to improve traffic efficiency, lessen congestion, and pave the way for intelligent roadways. Users are given useful information about traffic conditions and seat availability.
As a result, comfort and safety are increased, and commute times are cut. The initial idea of vehicle ad hoc networks (VANETs) was turned into a creative idea called the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) as a result of the quick advancements in novel compute and communication technology. Due to its ability to connect smart cars to the Internet, the IoV is a necessity for the ITS. The US Department of Transportation (DOT) claims that the IoV can especially help to lower the number of collisions involving unimpaired drivers. Due to the good communication and cooperation among cars, it is anticipated that 79% of these collisions might be avoided with the incorporation of IoV.
Recently, the application of blockchain technology has expanded significantly. It has become a crucial instrument in a number of academic and professional disciplines, including supply chain management, healthcare, finance, and transportation. It is recognized as an innovative, decentralized, safe, transparent, and immutable method for data management and sharing.
The data distribution and storage infrastructure for IoV has to be decentralized, distributed, and scalable in order to support the development of IoV in smart transportation in the future and address all the aforementioned issues.
Due to its decentralized design and distributed ledger capability, blockchain technology has the potential to present a desired option. By moving the central decision into a dispersed peer-to-peer (P2P) network paradigm where each peer (node) in the network handles their own operation freely, it eliminates the dependence on a centralized administration. Single points of failure are eliminated by the decentralized system.
Anyway, it is anticipated that an increase in the number of smart cars and related services and apps for vehicles would eventually produce massive volumes of data and significant network traffic. In addition, the complicated IoV context, low latency, and high mobility might lead to issues with cloud storage, administration, and security. Therefore, it is crucial to guarantee that the IoV platform’s data storage and exchange are safe, scalable, adaptable, interoperable, distributed, and decentralized. This further assures the growth of the IoV and the attainment of the ITS’s full potential.
New cars are becoming more and more reliant on the on-board controls and devices. Attacking a vehicle’s internal software or control mechanisms (such as by installing malicious online software) can have a serious negative impact on driver and passenger safety. New transportation regulations can be put in place to solve any of the aforementioned problems. In reality, the method is appropriate for severe scenarios but may not be unnecessary.
Another strategy involves building new roads and/or enhancing already-existing facilities, such as enlarging bridges, to provide more services.
In conclusion, blockchain functions independently of outside parties. There is no need for a third party because the parties involved in the transaction are connected immediately. The blockchain serves as a record of every transaction. These transactions cannot be deleted or changed after they have been saved. Following are the key conclusions that can be derived from this article:
Blockchain makes it possible to quickly and efficiently offer sender authentication and timely messages. Cars in vehicular networks must make decisions quickly since they are mobile and moving continually. However, it takes a lot of time for an individual to authenticate a sender and a message; in the vehicular network, it is not feasible to invest this much time in authentication.
The blockchain offers a remedy for this real-time response problem. For authentication, blockchain employs built-in algorithms with millisecond reaction times. Therefore, the information and credentials of stakeholders (sender, receiver, and other entities) may be processed and certified quickly by implementing blockchain technology in vehicular networks so that customers and stakeholders can concentrate on making decisions without any ambiguity.
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