BFRN-IoV: Blockchain and Fog-Enabled Route Navigation for Digital Twin-Based Internet of Vehicles

The rapid evolution of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) necessitates secure, scalable, and low-latency route navigation mechanisms that can operate in highly dynamic vehicular environments. Emerging paradigms such as Vehicular Digital Twins (VDTs) further enhance IoV ecosystems by enabling real-time virtual representations of physical vehicles, facilitating predictive analytics, intelligent decision-making, and context-aware routing. However, conventional VANET-based approaches suffer from centralized trust dependencies, high computational overhead, and limited adaptability to real-time traffic conditions. This paper proposes BFRN-IoV, a blockchain- and fog-enabled route navigation framework that integrates lightweight ECC-HMAC-based mutual authentication, RSU-assisted fog routing, and global route validation via a Geo-Location Provider (GLP), while leveraging VDTs for enhanced situational awareness and dynamic route optimization. The framework ensures key security properties-including confidentiality, integrity, pseudonymity, unlinkability, and non-repudiation-using ECDH-derived session keys, HKDF-based key expansion, and HMAC verification, while preserving privacy through pseudonym-based identity management. A permissioned blockchain provides immutable and auditable logging of routing interactions without exposing vehicle identities. Simulation results using SUMO and implementation via Web3 demonstrate significant improvements in routing accuracy, along with reduced communication and computational overhead compared to existing approaches. Formal verification using the Scyther tool confirms robustness against replay, impersonation, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The proposed framework delivers a unified, secure, and efficient solution for real-time IoV route navigation, further strengthened by the integration of VDTs in next-generation intelligent transportation systems.