A Blockchain-Based Cooperative Perception in Internet of Vehicles

In the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs), cooperative perception allows vehicles to share the sensor data with each other, so as to increase the perception range of vehicles beyond their field of view. This enables vehicles to obtain more accurate sensing information while driving and improves the safety of vehicles on the road. However, malicious nodes can send false information and poison the cooperative perception process. Therefore, how to guarantee the security of cooperative perception is crucial. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based scheme for the post hoc electronic forensics of cooperative perception. Applying blockchain in cooperative perception is however challenging. Due to the high mobility of vehicles, the connection of vehicles to the Internet is intermittent and unpredictable. In this scenario, the security and effectiveness of blockchain can not be guaranteed as vehicles are offline.11Offline refers to that the vehicles can not connect to the Internet, but they can use vehicle-to-vehicle communication to share data. and can not update the blockchain on time. On addressing the issue, We develop an offline blockchain scheme that is composed of offline and online phases. In the offline phase, vehicles transact by sending a commitment. In the online phases before and after the offline phase, the deposit and arbitration mechanisms are proposed to defeat potential attacks in the offline phase. Lastly, the consortium blockchain is deployed to store the records of the cooperative perception process so that the records are tamper-proof and can be traced. Using extensive evaluations, we show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.