Enhancing IoV Security: A Decentralized Blockchain Framework for Vehicle Identification and Tracking

Abstract

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) enhances transportation through connectivity and intelligence. However, this integration exposes IoV systems to various cyber threats, such as data breaches, hacking, vehicle control manipulation, and vehicle identity theft, which must be addressed to ensure system security. This study tackles security, scalability, and efficiency issues in the IoV framework by implementing a decentralized, blockchain-based authentication framework. It addresses cryptographic vulnerabilities, reduces computational and communication costs, and improves real-time performance. The framework also reduces latency and communication overhead, ensuring secure connectivity in high-traffic IoV scenarios. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the techniques deployed, including secure mapping, distributed verification, verified connectivity, and decentralized validation. The results of performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed framework has improved computing efficiency, high communication effectiveness, and reduced overall delay. The system is also shown to be adaptable to various node densities and communication conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed framework achieves a computation cost of 4.29 ms, representing a 48.19% improvement over the best-performing existing methods. Similarly, the total communication cost of the framework is 176 ms, showing reductions of 65.22%, 51.38%, 76.56%, and 74.04% compared to previous approaches. Lastly, a security analysis confirms that the framework establishes a solid security foundation, and the results of a comparative analysis indicate its potential to strengthen the security of IoV networks.