Primary node selection based on node reputation evaluation for PBFT in UAV-assisted MEC environment

Blockchain technology is widely used in various fields due to its high security and reliability. And Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted edge computing is easy to deploy, fast, and flexible. Combining blockchain technology with UAV-assisted edge computing is a hot research topic today. In order to improve the problem of the high overhead of node communication in this environment. In this paper, a primary node selection method based on node reputation evaluation is proposed. In the traditional Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) algorithm, the efficiency of node communication is very low when the number of nodes becomes large. The algorithm proposed in this paper selects the primary node based on the reputation value, which not only reduces the probability that the primary node is the wrong node but also reduces the number of communications and the communication overhead during the communication process, based on the node identity determined by the node reputation. In the experimental results, three benchmarks are selected for comparison experiments, and it is concluded that the algorithm proposed in this paper can effectively reduce the communication overhead in the PBFT algorithm, reduce the communication delay and improve the efficiency of nodes.