EPDB: An Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Electric Charging Scheme in the Internet of Robotic Things

In recent years, electric vehicles have emerged as a promising mode of transportation. With the development of Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) technology, charging stations are employing interconnected robots to charge electric vehicles, automating the collection and transmission of user charging information. However, charging processes pose risks of privacy leakage to users, as malicious attackers could potentially exploit the collected charging information to infer the real identities and behavioral habits of electric vehicle users. Existing studies leverage the decentralization and anonymity of blockchain to achieve privacy-preserving charging management. Due to the increasing number of users and limited battery capacity, there is a large volume of charging requests demand to be processed. However, the consensus mechanism of blockchain limits the system throughput. Therefore, it is a challenge to preserve the privacy of electric vehicle users and simultaneously improve the system processing efficiency. To address these concerns, we propose an efficient and privacy-preserving electric vehicle charging scheme (EPDB), which leverages Decentralized identifier (DID) and Pedersen commitment scheme to achieve reliable charging reservations while hidding EV User’s charging information. Additionally, we propose an efficient blockchain consensus protocol, which serves as the underlying storage for DID, thus significantly improving the system throughput. Furthermore, our proposed consensus protocol maintains high throughput even when encountering Byzantine attacks. Our theoretical analysis indicates that EPDB scheme effectively mitigate Byzantine attacks, preserve privacy and prevents deception of charging services, and our experimental results demonstrate the high efficiency of EPDB scheme.