A Blockchain-Based Approach to Track Traffic Messages in Vehicular Networks

Sharing traffic information on the vehicular network is essential to implement an efficient transportation system. Earlier communication of road closure warnings, car accident notices, and driver route changes is crucial to reduce traffic congestion. Unfortunately, tracking the exchanged traffic data and ensuring their correctness are not easy tasks. Vehicles can act maliciously by sending erroneous information or being subject to cyber-attacks, causing incorrect messages in the system. To efficiently identify the incorrect traffic information and track the exchanged data, we use a blockchain due to its decentralization, data immutability, security, and transparency features. We consider both the well-secured proof of work (PoW) and the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithms. We study the adaptation of those two algorithms to enable an efficient, secure, and transparent exchange of data in vehicular networks. We also discuss their empirical performance under real-world vehicular network settings.