Research on Joint Protection of LBS Location and Query Privacy in Internet of Vehicles Based on an Improved PIR Algorithm

ABSTRACT To address the issues of high computational overhead, poor real‐time performance, and excessive focus on location privacy while neglecting query privacy in existing Internet of Vehicles (IoV) Location‐Based Services (LBS) privacy protection schemes. This research proposes a joint protection scheme for location and query privacy in IoV LBS based on a subspace‐optimized PIR algorithm. This scheme integrates keyword‐based Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocols with the BFV fully homomorphic encryption algorithm to protect the privacy of user query content and access patterns, preventing the server and attackers from obtaining specific queries or feedback results. Furthermore, the scheme introduces R‐tree spatial indexing and Order‐Preserving Encryption (OPE) algorithms, optimizing global search into subspace search, thereby reducing the computational complexity of PIR from O(N) to O(logN) and improving efficiency. Security analysis demonstrates excellent performance in query privacy protection and resistance to malicious attacks. Performance tests reveal that the overall computational overhead is reduced by approximately 80% compared to existing typical solutions, significantly enhancing system efficiency under strong privacy protection, making it suitable for resource‐constrained and high real‐time‐demand environments in IoV LBS applications.