Hybrid Consensus Networks for Scalable and Secure Internet of Vehicles

Permissioned distributed ledgers (PDLs) provide security and trust for Internet of Vehicles (IoV) applications, but face scalability issues due to resource-intensive consensus mechanisms. To address this, we propose a novel hybrid consensus network (HCN) architecture that leverages the computational capabilities of parked connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) through a multi-layer vehicular edge computing (VEC) framework. The HCN is designed following guidelines outlined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) regarding the structuring of PDLs. It aims to improve the performance, reliability and scalability of PDL-based IoV networks while maintaining their security and trust guarantees.