Blockchain-Based Distributed Resource Management for Delay Minimization in UAV-Assisted Vehicular Networks

As intelligent transportation system advances, traditional vehicular networks encounter significant challenges of rapidly increasing data amount, stringent latency requirement and severe resource shortage for diversified applications. In this paper, we design a blockchain-based resource management framework to enhance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aided communications in vehicular networks. The UAVs are divided into primary UAVs (PUs) and secondary UAVs (SUs), and the SUs operate on channels under the tolerated interference limitation (TIL) of the PUs. To coordinate spectrum usage between PUs and SUs, we establish a Stackelberg game model where the PUs adjust the TIL to minimize the overall system delay while each SU selects channel to reduce its own delay under the constraints of transmit power and outage probability. Meanwhile, we employ the blockchain technology to manage the spectrum usage of the SUs under specified TIL configurations. The SUs select their channels and power settings by using deep reinforcement learning (DRL) with the D3QN algorithm, while the advanced Ripple protocol facilitates a low-latency and accurate consensus process among the PUs. Simulation results demonstrate the performance gains of the blockchain technology and DRL algorithm in terms of transmission delay and data rate.