V-track: Blockchain-enabled IoT system for reliable vehicle location verification✩

Mritunjay Shall Peelam; Kunjan Shah; Vinay Chamola

doi:10.1016/j.dcan.2024.08.004

›› 2026, Vol. 12 ›› Issue (1) :119 -133. DOI: 10.1016/j.dcan.2024.08.004

Special issue on cyber-physical systems for intelligent transportation and smart cities

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V-track: Blockchain-enabled IoT system for reliable vehicle location verification^✩

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Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, BITS-Pilani, Pilani Campus, 333031, India

^* mritunjay.peelam@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in (M.S. Peelam), f20190072@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in (K. Shah), vinay.chamola@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in (V. Chamola).

Mritunjay Shall Peelam completed his Ph.D. at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani), with a research focus on Quantum Computing, Blockchain, IoT, and Intelligent Transportation Systems. He is currently serving as an Assistant Profes-sor (Selection Grade) in the School of Computer Science at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun. He earned his M.Tech. in Computer Science and Engi-neering from the University School of Information, Communication and Technology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, in 2021, where he received the Mr. Tal-ented of the Year award. He completed his B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IETE, New Delhi, in 2012, securing the All-India 9th Rank. Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pran-veer Singh Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. He received the Outstanding Research Article Award at the Doctoral Colloquium, BITS Pilani, for his work titled “A Review on Emergency Vehicle Management for Intelligent Transportation Systems”, demonstrating excellence in smart mobility research. Additionally, he was recognized by the IET Quan-tum Communication journal for authoring one of the Top 10 Most-Cited Papers of 2023, “Quantum Computing Applications for the Internet of Thing”, highlighting his significant contributions at the intersection of quantum technologies and IoT.

Kunjan Shah is pursuing a joint PhD at Birla Institute of Science and Technology, Pilani (BITS Pilani), and RMIT (Melbourne, Australia), under Prof. Vinay Chamola and Prof. Feng Xia. He is an active researcher in the domain of Generative AI, IoT, Blockchain, and Intelligent Transport Systems. He received an M.E. degree in Computer Science from BITS Pilani in 2025. He earned his B.E. in Computer Science from BITS Pilani in 2023. He has also been awarded a merit scholarship for academic excellence for 3 consecutive semesters at BITS Pilani.

Vinay Chamola received his B.E. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 2010 and his M.E. degree in Communication Engineering in 2013 from the Birla In-stitute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, India. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2016. In 2015, he served as a Visiting Researcher with the Autonomous Networks Re-search Group (ANRG) at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, and subsequently worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at NUS. He is currently an Asso-ciate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at BITS Pilani, Pilani campus, where he heads the Internet of Things Research Group/Laboratory. His research interests include IoT security, blockchain, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), ve-hicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), 5G technologies, and healthcare systems. He serves as an Area Editor for the Ad Hoc Networks journal (Elsevier) and the IEEE Internet of Things Magazine, and as an Associate Editor for several reputed journals, including IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Networking Letters, IEEE Con-sumer Electronics Magazine, IET Quantum Communications, and IET Networks. He has also served as co-chair for multiple international workshops, such as IEEE GLOBECOM 2021, IEEE INFOCOM 2022, IEEE ANTS 2021, and IEEE ICIAfS 2021. He is listed among the World’s Top 2% Scientists identified by Stanford University. Additionally, he is the Co-founder and President of the healthcare startup Medsupervision Pvt. Ltd., a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the IET.

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Abstract

Location-Based Services (LBS) have greatly improved eﬃciency and functionality in various domains, but privacy and security concerns remain due to the centralized nature of many existing systems. To address these issues, this paper introduces the V-Track system, a decentralized architecture using blockchain technology for reliable vehicle location verification. By integrating GPS devices (SparkFun GPS NEO-M9), IoT-enabled sensors, and a Cosmos blockchain-based ledger (network of interconnected blockchains), V-Track aims to solve centralized LBS problems. Through rigorous simulation experiments, this paper evaluates the performance and security of the V-Track system and demonstrates its potential to provide reliable location verification while preserving user privacy. This paper makes significant contributions by presenting V-Track as a decentralized solution to centralized LBS privacy and security problems, enhancing reliability and trustworthiness through blockchain integration, improving tracking mechanisms with GPS devices and IoT sensors for improved accuracy, and providing a privacy-preserving alternative to centralized LBS through its decentralized design and use of blockchain technology. These advancements hold promise for applications across multiple sectors, including logistics, supply chain management, urban planning, and emerging fields such as autonomous vehicles and augmented reality.

Keywords

GPS / IoT / Blockchain / Proof-of-location / GPS spoofing

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Mritunjay Shall Peelam, Kunjan Shah, Vinay Chamola. V-track: Blockchain-enabled IoT system for reliable vehicle location verification^✩. , 2026, 12(1): 119-133 DOI:10.1016/j.dcan.2024.08.004

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CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mritunjay Shall Peelam: Writing-review & editing, Writing-orig-inal draft. Kunjan Shah: Writing-review & editing. Vinay Chamola: Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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