On the Joint Placement of Blockchain and Users’ Virtualized Services in the Internet of Vehicles

Driven by the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), Intelligent Transportation Systems are rapidly developing from traditional vehicle ad-hoc networks to the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). It supports various future applications, such as road traffic status detection and anti-collision warning for autonomous driving. IoV networks face several security and privacy challenges. Indeed, malicious nodes can compromise the system’s integrity and confidentiality by sending fake messages, thus jeopardizing human life. Blockchain has emerged as a potential solution to enhance IoV’s security given its unique features. To do so, this paper proposes a novel approach for joint resource allocation of blockchain and users’ virtualized services in IoV networks. Specifically, we formulate the joint placement problem of blockchain and user services’ virtualized network functions (VNFs) aiming to maximize the satisfaction of users’ service requests while realizing the shortest blockchain operation times related to those requests, as an integer linear program (ILP), known to be NP-hard. To solve it in a reasonable time, we propose two low-complexity solutions, the first is a meta-heuristic based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the second is a greedy solution. Through simulations, we evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches and their suitability for different service requirements.