Smart Contract-Based Decentralized Data Sharing and Content Delivery for Intelligent Connected Vehicles in Edge Computing

Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) need to obtain real-time traffic data from nearby ICVs or remote content providers to ensure safe driving. However, providers are hesitant to share their data due to privacy and benefits concerns. To ensure privacy while improving efficiency of obtaining data, we proposed smart contract-based data sharing among ICVs, and content delivery between ICVs and remote content provider. To solve low willingness to vehicles due to untrustworthy third-party platforms, we use smart contracts to implement access control during data upload and transaction. Then, we propose a one-to-many sharing model based on Stackelberg game to model the interaction between consumers and owners. Consumers adjust their reward strategies with the owners’ optimal strategies to maximize its utility, thus obtaining the nash equilibrium solution. To provide reliable quality of service (QoS) and security guarantee for content delivery, smart contracts regulate the delivery process, facilitating automatic execution under specific conditions. Transaction records audited and stored on blockchain enhance transparency and trustworthiness. Utilizing a delivery utility model that considers benefits, costs, and mining profits, proposed quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) algorithm is used to find the optimal solution. We built an EdgeChain testbed, and used BDD-100K dataset to evaluate the performance in utility, access delay, etc. Compared to CTM and MFPA, proposed data sharing algorithm achieves maximum consumer utility. Compared to LRU, PCCM and MARL, when content is 400, proposed content delivery algorithm reduces average access delay by 30.88%, 18.92% and 4.86%, and reduce backhaul load by 50.04%, 47.23% and 3.16%.