Ultra-Lightweight and Secure Blockchain-Assisted Charging Scheduling Scheme for Vehicular Edge Networks by Utilization of NanoPi NEO

In vehicular edge computing networks, electric vehicles can get charging services from edge servers through some road-side charging stations. Several recent studies have investigated how to deal with security requirements in these communications. Nevertheless, simultaneous provision of security and lightness, which is crucial for resource-constrained vehicles, is still an open issue. More critically, the anonymity from the perspective of honest-but-curious edge nodes has not been yet addressed. Thus, this paper proposes a novel ultra-lightweight framework for the secure and anonymous communications of vehicles during their charging reception by means of blockchain. Thanks to the blockchain technology, the accountability of electric vehicle possessors guaranteed. The proposed scheme has been validated in terms of security metrics and also implemented on two ARM-based platforms, one 32-bit ARM microcontroller and one 64-bit ARM processor. Further, its blockchain part has been deployed on a Hyperledger Fabric network. The obtained results besides the comparison with well-respected similar schemes acknowledge the usefulness and practicability of the presented scheme.