Blockchain-Empowered Resource Trading for Optimizing Bandwidth Reservation in Vehicular Networks

Resource trading between vehicles, which involves the buying and selling of computing and bandwidth resources, is a promising approach for cost-effectively provisioning services in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving. These applications require a guarantee and the timely receipt of resources through efficient advance reservations. However, due to uncertainties in future reservation duration and resource costs, vehicles exhibit two distinct patterns: some may have reserved insufficient resources and need to purchase more (acting as vehicle requesters), while others may have overbooked resources and need to sell (acting as vehicle providers). In this paper, we formulate the resource trading problem from both the requester and provider perspectives and propose a resource trading architecture to optimize bandwidth reservation. It utilizes blockchain smart contracts for secure and efficient resource exchange within a mobile network operator (MNO) environment. Two algorithms are introduced: a provider selection algorithm to enhance system efficiency by selecting cost-effective providers, and a decision-making algorithm to assist providers in choosing between selling overbooked bandwidth or canceling it. Through simulations, the results show that these algorithms lead to significant cost reductions for requesters and profit gains for providers, up to 59% and 19%, respectively, compared to reservation schemes without resource trading in such a dynamic environment.