Blockchain-Assisted Message Reporting Scheme With Weighted Threshold Signature for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

In vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), message reporting is an effective method for improving traffic safety and efficiency. Most existing VANET message reporting schemes rely on the trust value of a single vehicle to determine message authenticity, which leads to unreliable message sources. Even multi vehicle-assisted reporting schemes are limited by the assumption that all vehicles have the same credibility, which does not reflect the actual dynamic VANET environment in which vehicles have different credibilities. To address this issue, we propose a blockchain-assisted VANET message reporting scheme with weighted threshold signatures. Through the design of weights, the credibility of different vehicles is quantified, and the impact of vehicles on the signing process is differentiated. Threshold signature generation relies on the weight sum of all signatories reaching a predetermined threshold, to enable flexible and reliable message reporting. Security analysis shows that our proposed scheme combined with blockchain can satisfy the security and privacy requirements of VANET message reporting. Performance analysis indicates that our proposed scheme outperforms the most advanced VANET message reporting schemes in terms of transmission and computation performance.