A Parallel Consensus Mechanism Using PBFT Based on DAG-Lattice Structure in the Internet of Vehicles

The blockchain technology in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) can be applied to solve security problems. Due to the high dynamics and resource constraints of the IoV, the traditional single-chain blockchain system is not suitable for the practical scenarios. In our previous work, we proposed a lightweight blockchain architecture based on the directed acyclic graph lattice (DAG-lattice) structure for the IoV. However, the current consensus algorithms are not suitable for the previous architecture mentioned above. Therefore, this article proposes a parallel consensus mechanism based on the DAG-lattice structure in the IoV using practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) as consensus algorithm. This mechanism solves the problem of low efficiency of PBFT caused by too many consensus nodes and the mobility of nodes by adopting the method of network sharding, and meanwhile to ensure that transactions can be reached on consensus parallelly. To avoid the selection of primary nodes from being predicted in advance, this article proposes a primary node selection method based on verifiable random function (VRF). Moreover, a method is proposed of selecting transactions based on weighted round robin (WRR) scheduling to motivate nodes for the purpose of maintaining a high reputation score. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is verified by experiments whose results show that the proposed consensus mechanism shows better performance than other comparable schemes in terms of the time added to the blockchain, transaction per second (TPS), consensus success rate, and the time of obtaining transaction. And the proposed mechanism is less dependent on roadside unit (RSU).