CovaDel: a blockchain-enabled secure and QoS-aware drone delivery framework for COVID-like pandemics

With increase in the use of contactless deliveries during the times such as COVID-19 pandemic, the emphasis was to minimize the human presence to reduce the spread of virus. In this regard, drones are one promising alternative to be used as delivery agents. However, security and Quality of Service (QoS) are major concerns while making use of drones for deliveries. In order to secure the drone communication system, we propose, CovaDel: a blockchain-based scheme to secure data transactions for the drone delivery use case that works in a phased manner. The proposed scheme make use of decoupled blockchain architecture to overcome the limited resources capabilities of drones to perform blockchain-based computations. Further, to ensure the QoS adherence, we also propose a QoS-aware communication approach that handles collisions and congestion on the basis of firefly algorithm’s attractiveness parameter (light intensity) received by the drones. Results obtained using a simulated environment verify the efficacy of the proposed scheme on the basis of gas consumed, transaction time, average network throughput, and delay.