Secure and Privacy-Preserving Networking Strategy for Dynamic Wireless Charging of EVs

Electric vehicles (EVs) that use dynamic wireless charging (DWC) rely on charging pads (CPs) placed along the road. For a group of mobile EVs, coordination of DWC requests can be adopted to indicate (a) the set of CPs at which each EV can charge and (b) the amount of supplied energy to each EV. Given a limited energy supply, this coordination can maximize the number of satisfied charging requests. However, this coordination requires the EV to exchange private information (i.e., identity and location) with the operator to schedule the charge. In literature, blockchain has been used to develop a privacy-preserving networking strategy that provides user anonymity and data unlinkability for DWC coordination. This paper shows that such a blockchain-based strategy is vulnerable to denial of service (DoS) attacks. Hence, we propose an approach based on blockchain and a modified K-times group signature to provide user anonymity, data unlinkability, and security against DoS attacks. A case study of Nashville, TN, USA is investigated showing that the proposed strategy can serve all the publicly charging EVs in Nashville within a DWC coordination period of 30 min while offering the required security and privacy features.