RBCET: A Reputation-Based Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Fast and Secured Energy Trading in Internet of Electric Vehicles (IoEV)

The state-of-the-art consensus mechanisms in blockchain-based Internet of Electric Vehicles (IoEV) prove suboptimal for energy trading due to their heavy CPU workload, high bandwidth consumption, energy inefficiencies, and the backlog of pending transactions. Also, the network is susceptible to attacks such as double-spending, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), eclipse, Sybil, and collusion attacks. Addressing these challenges, this paper introduces RBCET, a reputation-based consensus mechanism explicitly designed for energy trading within the IoEV blockchain network. The RBCET computes the reputation score (RS) of nodes (e.g., Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Charging Stations (CSs)) in the IoEV network using a decision tree regressor (DTR) model. This model utilizes the reputation parameter dataset generated by a relational mathematical model. RBCET allows only those EVs and CSs to participate in energy trading whose RS value exceeds the average RS value. Additionally, we also propose a hardware-based incentive mechanism to calculate and store incentives to enhance the efficiency of energy trading. Security analysis shows that RBCET resists the attacks mentioned above. Furthermore, we have developed a testbed using 10 Raspberry Pi 4 devices to demonstrate the performance of RBCET compared with state-of-the-art schemes. This comparison shows that RBCET reduces CPU workload by 47%, energy consumption by 10%, bandwidth usage by 5%, the volume of pending transactions by 75%, and overall improves efficiency by 62%.