SECR: A Secure and Efficient Charging Reservation Scheme Based on Digital Twin in Vehicular Network

Despite the rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs), charging remains a time-consuming issue that requires effective management. An important solution uses digital twin (DT) technology, which acts as a virtual agent for EVs in the digital space. DT can analyze real-time vehicle data to develop optimal charging schedules and reserve charging providers in advance through the vehicular network, leading to more efficient charging processes. However, the vehicular network exposes the automated reservation process of the DT to security attacks. Additionally, there is a risk that the actual charging process may deviate from the scheduled requirements set by the DT, resulting in wasted charging resources. To address these issues, this article proposes a secure and efficient charging reservation scheme based on DT technology. To prevent malicious attacks, we first design a secure and privacy-preserving reservation authentication protocol using the extended Chebyshev chaotic maps, taking into account the computational resources of the EV. Furthermore, we develop a reputation mechanism to evaluate and incentivize the charging behavior of EVs. Formal verification and further discussions are conducted to show diverse security functionalities of the proposed scheme can be achieved. We evaluate that the proposed scheme outperforms existing schemes in terms of computation and communication overheads, while also assessing the impact of EV charging behavior on reputation and charging level.