TD-SAS: A Trust-Aware and Decentralized Speed Advisory System for Energy-Efficient Autonomous Vehicle Platoons

Autonomous vehicle platooning benefits significantly from the Consensus Speed Advisory System (CSAS), an emerging technology that recommends a consensus speed to reduce energy consumption. However, managing trust to ensure system security and identify malicious nodes poses a considerable challenge in these autonomous environments. Furthermore, while CSAS optimizes the total energy consumption of the platoon, it may inadvertently result in increased energy use for specific vehicles, discouraging their continued participation and hindering an efficient formation of a platoon. This paper proposes a trust-aware and decentralized speed advisory system (TD-SAS) to address these challenges. TD-SAS employs a consortium blockchain for managing trust nodes, providing non-repudiation and tamper resistance for reputation data. Capitalizing on this platform, we use a multi-weight subjective logic model for precise reputation value calculation. Additionally, we present a trust-aware consensus speed recommendation scheme capable of adapting its recommendations to vehicular reputation variations. To mitigate the potential disincentives for vehicles experiencing increased energy consumption, we incorporate an incentive mechanism to encourage their re-engagement with TD-SAS. Comprehensive security analysis and extensive simulation experiments confirm the robustness and effectiveness of TD-SAS, emphasizing its potential for enhancing the energy efficiency and security of autonomous vehicle platoons.