A Hardware Implementation of Blockchain Enabled Cross Domain Authentication Scheme in Internet of Vehicles

Abstract

: Internet of Vehicles (IoV) enable enable communication between vehicles and infrastructure to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. However, authenticating vehicles across different administrative domains remains a challenge. This work proposes a blockchain-based authentication framework that enables secure cross-domain communication between vehicles. The proposed architecture combines Ethereum smart contracts with a Trusted Authority (TA) and Key Generation Center (KGC) to maintain decentralized domain trust while allowing efficient local authentication. A prototype system was implemented using a WiFi Router as the Road Side Unit (RSU) for network connectivity, a Raspberry Pi 5 hosting the TA and KGC servers, ESP32 micro-controllers as vehicle nodes, and a local Ethereum blockchain using Hardhat. Experiments were conducted with vehicle counts ranging from 100 to 500 and domain counts from 2 to 10. The system maintained a packet delivery ratio of 100% across all experiments while achieving average latency between 49 ms and 206 ms and throughput between 391 and 723 requests per second. The results demonstrate that blockchain-assisted authentication can be integrated into IoV systems without significant performance degradation.