This paper proposes a generic scheme VaCoChain , that fuses blockchain (BC) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) underlying fifth-generation (5G) communication services for timely vaccine distribution during novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and future pandemics. The scheme offers 5G-tactile internet (5G-TI) based services for UAV communication networks (UAVCN) monitored through ground controller stations (GCs). 5G-TI enabled UAVCN supports real-time dense connectivity at ultra-low round-trip time (RTT) latency of $< \text{1 ms}$ and high availability of 99.99999%. Thus, it can support resilient vaccine distributions in a phased manner at government-designated nodal centers (NCs) with reduced round trip delays from vaccine production warehouses (VPW). Further, UAVCNs ensure minimizes human intervention and controls vaccine health conditions due to shorter trip times. Once vaccines are supplied at NCs warehouses, then the BC ensures timestamped documentation of vaccinated persons with chronology, auditability, and transparency of supply-chain checkpoints from VPW to NCs. Through smart contracts (SCs), priority groups can be formed for vaccination based on age, healthcare workers, and general commodities. In the simulation, for UAV efficacy, we have compared the scheme against fourth-generation (4G)-assisted long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) channels, and traditional logistics for round-trip time (RTT) latency, logistics, and communication costs. In the BC setup, we have compared the scheme against the existing 5G-TI delivery scheme (Gupta et al. ) for processing latency, packet losses, and transaction time. For example, in communication costs, the proposed scheme achieves an average improvement of 9.13 for block meta-information. For 4000 transactions, the proposed scheme has a communication latency of 16 s compared to 36 s. The packet loss is significantly reduced to 2.5% using 5G-TI compared to 16% in 4G-LTE-A. The proposed scheme has a computation cost of 1.6 ms and a communication cost of 157 bytes, which indicates the scheme efficacy against conventional approaches.

中文翻译：

---

VaCoChain：面向未来大流行的基于区块链的 5G 辅助无人机疫苗分发方案

本文提出了一个通用的方案VaCoChain 融合了区块链 (BC) 和无人机 (UAV) 作为第五代 (5G) 通信服务的基础，以便在新型冠状病毒 (COVID-19) 和未来大流行期间及时分发疫苗。该方案为通过地面控制站 (GC) 监控的无人机通信网络 (UAVCN) 提供基于 5G 触觉互联网 (5G-TI) 的服务。支持 5G-TI 的 UAVCN 支持以超低往返时间 (RTT) 延迟的实时密集连接$< \文本{1毫秒}$和 99.99999% 的高可用性。因此，它可以在政府指定的节点中心 (NC) 分阶段支持有弹性的疫苗分发，减少疫苗生产仓库 (VPW) 的往返延误。此外，由于飞行时间更短，UAVCN 确保最大限度地减少人为干预并控制疫苗健康状况。一旦在 NC 仓库提供疫苗，BC 就会确保接种人员的时间戳记录，包括从 VPW 到 NC 的供应链检查点的时间顺序、可审计性和透明度。通过智能合约（SC），可以根据年龄、医护人员和一般商品形成疫苗接种的优先群体。在模拟中，对于无人机的功效，我们将该方案与第四代 (4G) 辅助的长期演进高级 (LTE-A) 进行了比较，正交频分复用 (OFDM) 信道，以及往返时间 (RTT) 延迟、物流和通信成本的传统物流。在 BC 设置中，我们将该方案与现有的 5G-TI 交付方案（Gupta等。) 用于处理延迟、数据包丢失和事务时间。例如，在通信成本方面，所提出的方案对块元信息实现了 9.13 的平均改进。对于 4000 个事务，所提出的方案的通信延迟为 16 秒，而 36 秒。与 4G-LTE-A 中的 16% 相比，使用 5G-TI 的丢包率显着降低至 2.5%。所提出的方案的计算成本为 1.6 ms，通信成本为 157 字节，这表明该方案对传统方法的有效性。