DRL-Based V2V Computation Offloading for Blockchain-Enabled Vehicular Networks

Abstract

Vehicular edge computing (VEC) is an effective method to increase the computing capability of vehicles, where vehicles share their idle computing resources with each other. However, due to the high mobility of vehicles, it is challenging to design an optimal task allocation policy that adapts to the dynamic vehicular environment. Further, vehicular computation offloading often occurs between unfamiliar vehicles, how to motivate vehicles to share their computing resources while guaranteeing the reliability of resource allocation in task offloading is one main challenge. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-enabled VEC framework to ensure the reliability and efficiency of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) task offloading. Specifically, we develop a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based computation offloading scheme for the smart contract of blockchain, where task vehicles can offload part of computation-intensive tasks to neighboring vehicles. To ensure the security and reliability in task offloading, we evaluate the reliability of vehicles in resource allocation by blockchain. Moreover, we propose an enhanced consensus algorithm based on practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT), and design a consensus nodes selection algorithm to improve the efficiency of consensus and motivate base stations to improve reliability in task allocation. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme for blockchain-enabled VEC.