Lightweight branched blockchain security framework for Internet of Vehicles

The vision of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has acquired widespread acceptance as a result of the development of wireless technology. Its ability to provide drivers with various mobile services has made it an attractive application. Blockchain based security solution is considered good in various applications of IoV till now. But all the frameworks and architectures developed so far in IoV adopt the load of blockchain. So, it is generally deployed on or above edge computing devices, keeping lower structure of the frameworks traditional as managing blockchain with low computing devices on the physical layer is really a challenge. Securing communication in an IoV environment requires ensuring strong authentication and encryption. Although limited efforts are accessible for strong authentication and secure communication but, the lightweight characteristic is absent from this list. This article is proposing a lightweight secured framework for blockchain based IoV that offers strong authentication and secure communication. After securely authorization of the vehicle, it introduces the concept of branched blockchain taking into the consideration of most recently used block, so that the low powered devices can also adopt the security benefits of the blockchain. The existing mining systems are not designed to handle the needs of the IoV at the physical layer. Some of the key features of the proposed framework are lightweight blockchain for physical layer and above, load balancing, scalability, availability and decentralization. According to the relative research, which takes into account factors like computation and transmission costs, our suggested framework outperforms already implemented ones. This framework can act as base of new research verticals where anyone is looking forward for a lightweight blockchain variant applicable on physical layer of IoV.