Blockchain-Based Method for Pre-Authentication and Handover Authentication of IoV Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an important supporting technology for intelligent transportation systems that connects traffic participants, such as vehicles, pedestrians, and roads, through wireless networks and enables information exchange to enhance traffic safety and improve traffic efficiency. The IoV is a unique network that involves many network security risks, which must be controlled through authentication, encryption, and other protective measures. To solve problems, such as high computing overhead and low handover authentication efficiency of the existing vehicle access authentication of the IoV, a compact consensus pre-authentication and handover authentication method was designed based on blockchain features such as decentralization and security. The proposed method is based on ensuring authentication security and reduces the consensus time, saves computing resources, and effectively solves the problems of high computing cost and high communication cost arising from frequent vehicle authentication handovers. A performance and security analysis demonstrates that our approach can reduce the computational overhead by up to 88.14% for a vehicle and by more than 60% for a roadside unit (RSU). The overall communication overhead of the solution is reduced by up to 71.31%. The data illustrate that the proposed method can safely and significantly improve the efficiency of vehicle handover authentication.