V-Guard: An Efficient Permissioned Blockchain for Achieving Consensus under Dynamic Memberships in V2X Networks

Abstract

This paper presents V-Guard, a new permissioned blockchain that achieves consensus for vehicular data under changing memberships, targeting the problem in V2X networks where vehicles are often intermittently connected on the roads. To achieve this goal, V-Guard integrates membership management into the consensus process for agreeing on data entries. It binds a data entry with a membership configuration profile that describes responsible vehicles for achieving consensus for the data entry. As such, V-Guard produces chained consensus results of both data entries and their residing membership profiles, which enables consensus to be achieved seamlessly under changing memberships. In addition, V-Guard separates the ordering of transactions from consensus, allowing concurrent ordering instances and periodic consensus instances to order and commit data entries. These features make V-Guard efficient for achieving consensus under dynamic memberships with high throughput and latency performance.

Wireless Distributed Consensus for Connected Autonomous Systems

“…Vehicular network could be regarded as a permissioned network where each participant is registered and authenticated by the authority (e.g., vehicle registration is needed). SMR has been enhanced for vehicular-network permissioned blockchain [9], [6]. Zhang et al [9] designed a blockchainoriented consensus to address the vehicular BFT problem.…”

“…SMR has been enhanced for vehicular-network permissioned blockchain [9], [6]. Zhang et al [9] designed a blockchainoriented consensus to address the vehicular BFT problem. Taking into account the intermittent connectivity of vehicles, their approach ensures that consensus can be executed without interruption during membership changes.…”

“…At the same time, the consensus mechanism is not only important in building a secure CAS network, but is also necessary for blockchain layer built atop it. However, current consensus specifically designed for blockchain [1], [9] in CAS is only suitable for blockchain itself rather than a unified protocol that can be used for general distributed CAS applications and blockchain. Deploying multiple consensus atop CAS network might increase complexity and cause unnecessary overhead.…”