Intelligent Transportation System Communication Research Articles

Intelligent Transportation System Technologies, Challenges and Security

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) first appeared in 1868 with traffic lights. With developing technology, the need to bring a smart approach to transportation applications within the scope of speed and environmental protection has emerged. Protecting ITS infrastructure against cyber attacks has become a matter of reputation for states. It is essential to provide the necessary technological infrastructure for the integrated operation of the systems used in ITS, especially geographical location, communication, and mapping. These technological developments bring cyber attacks, risks, and many dangers that should be avoided, especially on the systems used. This study examines ITS architecture, applications, communication technologies, and new trend technologies in detail. This study includes contributing to studies in the field of ITS and preventing attacks and incidents that may occur in terms of cyber security. The most important cyber attacks that may occur in ITS applications are included. In addition, the minimum security requirements that can be taken in ITS applications and infrastructures against these attacks are included.

Optimizing V2V communication in ITS: The benefits of silver-coated DSRC

The silver-coated DSRC of antennas are used for short-range communication between vehicles (V2V) in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), including DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communication). It has silver as a conducting material for the antennas and offers several benefits including higher data rates, increased range, and improved reliability for V2V communication. Using multiple antennas in a silver-coated DSRC provides spatial diversity, reducing the effects of multipath fading and interference. The radiation pattern can also be focused in a specific direction to increase the signal strength. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous drivers into ITS is becoming increasingly important, and V2V communication is a crucial aspect of these systems. The use of a silver-coated DSRC can provide a reliable and efficient solution for DSRC communication in V2V communication, which is essential for the success of ITS. The increased data rates, range, and reliability facilitate the exchange of information between autonomous vehicles, enabling them to make more informed decisions and operate more safely on roads.

Cybersecurity regulatory challenges for connected and automated vehicles – State-of-the-art and future directions

The technological advancements of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) are outpacing the current regulatory regime, potentially resulting in a disconnect between legislators, technology, and CAV stakeholders. Although many studies explore the regulatory requirements of operations of CAVs, studies on regulatory challenges specific to the cybersecurity of CAVs are also emerging and receiving lots of attention among researchers and practitioners. However, studies providing an up-to-date synthesis and analysis on CAVs regulatory requirements specific to cyber-risk reduction or mitigation are almost non-existent in the literature. This study aims to overcome this limitation by presenting a comprehensive overview of the role of key Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) stakeholders in CAV's cybersecurity. These stakeholders include road operators, service providers, automakers, consumers, repairers, and the general public.The outcome of this review is an in-depth synthesis of CAV-based ITS stakeholders by visualising their scope in developing a Cybersecurity Regulatory Framework (CRF). The study demonstrated the compliance requirements for ITS communication service providers, regulatory standards for CAVs automakers, policy readiness for CAVs customers and the general public who interact with CAVs, and the role of the CAVs Network Operator Centre in regulating CAVs data flow. Moreover, the study illuminates several critical pathways necessary in future for synthesizing and forecasting the legal landscape of CAV-based transportation systems to integrate the regulatory framework for CAV stakeholders. The paper's findings and conclusions would assist policymakers in developing a comprehensive CRF.

Free Space Optical Communications for Intelligent Transportation Systems: Potentials and Challenges

As one of the key technologies of the intelligent transportation system (ITS), vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications have received increasing attention. Because of the broad and unlicensed spectrum, free space optical (FSO) communications have become a potential technology for V2X communications. In this article, the implementation of FSO communications is introduced first. Afterward, for the three advantages of FSO communications in ITS, the concrete principle and implementation approaches are illustrated in detail. First, based on the adaptive illumination schemes, the communication range is expanded without visual interference caused by illumination. Second, with the help of mode division multiplexing (MDM) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), the communication rate is further increased. Third, integrating sensing and communication enables vehicles to effectively obtain information and improve traffic efficiency and safety. In addition, applications of FSO communications in various communication scenarios in ITS are described. To satisfy the complex requirements of communication, illumination, and sensing in traffic scenarios, a deep learning-enabled heterogeneous system of FSO and radio frequency is proposed. Furthermore, future applications and open issues are provided for further investigation.

Agreement-Induced Data Verification Model for Securing Vehicular Communication in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Intelligent Transportation security requires cooperative credentials for sharing navigation and communication data between the vehicles. However due to the dynamic environment, communication is interrupted by the adversaries, resulting in non-privacy issues. This article introduces an Agreement-induced Data Verification Model (ADVM) for securing vehicular communication against adversaries. The connected vehicles in a grid communicate with each other based on direct and indirect recommendation. This recommendation is based on mutual identity sharing between the vehicles for masked information exchange. Non-replicated and recommendation based verifications are performed using the vector classification learning. In this learning process, the credential validity and communication tolerance amid adversaries are augmented. The constraint-failing vehicles are disconnected from the communication grid, preventing its insecure impact over the communication. The proposed model’s performance is verified using false rate, success ratio, processing time, complexity, and recommendation ratio. For the different vehicles, the proposed model achieves 9.69% less false rate, 10.3% success ratio, 10.49% less processing time, 10.3% less complexity, and 12.87% high recommendation ratio.

Secure and Privacy-Preserving Trust Management System for Trustworthy Communications in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Secure and Privacy-Preserving Trust Management System for Trustworthy Communications in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Secure V2V and V2I Communication in Intelligent Transportation Using Cloudlets

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is a vision which offers safe, secure and smart travel experience to drivers. This futuristic plan aims to enable vehicles, roadside transportation infrastructures, pedestrian smart-phones and other devices to communicate with one another to provide safety and convenience services. Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication in ITS offers ability to exchange speed, heading angle, position and other environment related conditions amongst vehicles and with surrounding smart infrastructures. In this intelligent setup, vehicles and users communicate and exchange data with random untrusted entities (like vehicles, smart traffic lights or pedestrians) whom they don't know or have met before. The concerns of location privacy and secure communication further deter the adoption of this smarter and safe transportation. In this paper, we present a secure and trusted V2V and V2I communication approach using edge infrastructures where instead of direct peer to peer communication, we introduce trusted cloudlets to authorize, check and verify the authenticity, integrity and ensure anonymity of messages exchanged in the system. Moving vehicles or road side infrastructure are dynamically connected to nearby cloudlets, where security policies can be implemented to sanitize or stop fake messages and prevent rogue vehicles to exchange messages with other vehicles. We also present a formal attribute-based model for V2V and V2I communication, called AB-ITS, along with proof of concept implementation of the proposed solution in AWS IoT platform. This cloudlet supported architecture complements direct V2V or V2I communication, and serves important use cases such as accident or ice-threat warning and other safety applications. Performance metrics of our proposed architecture are also discussed and compared with existing ITS technologies.

Security Threats in Intelligent Transportation Systems and Their Risk Levels

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSs) are part of road transportation sector evolution and constitute one of the main steps towards vehicle automation. These systems use technologies that allow vehicles to communicate with each other or with road infrastructure. By increasing information quality and reliability, ITSs can improve road safety and traffic efficiency, but only if cybersecurity and data protection is ensured. With the increase in the number of cyberattacks around the world, cybersecurity is receiving increased attention, especially in the area of transportation security. However, it is equally important to examine and analyze security in depth when it concerns connected vehicles. In this paper, we propose a qualitative risk analysis of ITSs based on Threat, Risk, Vulnerability Analysis (TVRA) methodology, and we focus on ETSI ITS communication architecture. We present a review of solutions and countermeasures for identified critical attacks.

An HSS‐based robust and lightweight multiple group authentication for ITS towards 5G

The next generation of network communications (5G) has the particularity of being heterogeneous, which has different abilities with storage, computing and communication. Group communications is more and more popular for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in 5G since various smart devices have been constantly connected to ITS over the past decades. One of the main challenges faced by the group communications for ITS towards 5G is how to make the communications secure among these heterogeneous devices. Membership authentication is used to ensure that all users are legitimate group members in ITS communication systems towards 5G. A new type of authentication, called t-secure m-user n-group authentication scheme ((t, m, n) GAS), has been proposed in 2013. GAS is different from conventional peer-to-peer authentications which authenticate users one at a time. GAS can authenticate m users at once. GAS is specially designed for group communications which involve multiple users. Since then, extended research papers on group authentication have been published. A discrete-logarithm-based GAS with multiple authentications has been proposed in the original paper. In this paper, based on homomorphic secret sharing (HSS), a novel multiple group authentication is presented, which is more lightweight and robust than the original scheme. The security of the proposed scheme is unconditionally secure without any assumption. More importantly, since polynomial evaluations with a smaller modulus are needed in our proposed scheme, it is more efficient than the original scheme which needs modular exponentiations with a larger modulus, thus this design is more suitable for lightweight multiple group authentication in ITS towards 5G.

Towards 5G-Enabled Self Adaptive Green and Reliable Communication in Intelligent Transportation System

Fifth generation (5G) technologies have become the center of attention in managing and monitoring high-speed transportation system effectively with the intelligent and self-adaptive sensing capabilities. Besides, the boom in portable devices has witnessed a huge breakthrough in the data driven vehicular platform. However, sensor-based Internet of Things (IoT) devices are playing the major role as edge nodes in the intelligent transportation system (ITS). Thus, due to high mobility/speed of vehicles and resource-constrained nature of edge nodes more data packets will be lost with high power drain and shorter battery life. Thus, this research significantly contributes in three ways. First, 5G-based self-adaptive green (i.e., energy efficient) algorithm is proposed. Second, a novel 5G-driven reliable algorithm is proposed. Proposed joint energy efficient and reliable approach contains four layers, i.e., application, physical, networks, and medium access control. Third, a novel joint energy efficient and reliable framework is proposed for ITS. Moreover, the energy and reliability in terms of received signal strength (RSSI) and hence packet loss ratio (PLR) optimization is performed under the constraint that all transmitted packets must utilize minimum transmission power with high reliability under particular active time slot. Experimental results reveal that the proposed approach (with Cross Layer) significantly obtains the green (55%) and reliable (41%) ITS platform unlike the Baseline (without Cross Layer) for aging society.

Improved Tomlinson–Harashima Precoding for Ultra Reliable Communication in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are characterized by integrating computation and physical processes. To cope with the challenges of the application of the CPSs in all kinds of environments, especially the cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) which needs high quality end-to-end communication, the robustness and reliability for CPSs are very crucial. Aiming at the technical challenges of information transmission caused by the fading effect and the fast time-varying characteristics of the channel for C-V2X communication, an improved Tomlinson–Harashima precoding (THP) algorithm for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems is proposed. Channel state information (CSI) and correlation are exploited to compensate instantaneous CSI, which could reflect current real-time channel status exactly. Further, the iterative water filling power allocation algorithm and the multiuser scheduling algorithm based on the greedy algorithm are jointly optimized and applied to the THP, which could improve the system performance. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can be efficiently applied to high-speed mobility scenarios and improve bit error ratio (BER) performance as well as spectrum utilization.

Characterization of Field of View in Visible Light Communication Systems for Intelligent Transportation Systems

This paper reports a detailed experimental characterization of non Line-of-Sight (LoS) optical performances of a Visible Light Communication (VLC) system using a real traffic light for ultra-low latency, infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communications for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) protocols. Despite the implementation of long-sought ITS protocols poses the crucial need to detail how the features of optical stages influence the overall performances of a VLC system in realistic configurations, such characterization has rarely been addressed at present. We carried out an experimental investigation in a realistic configuration where a regular traffic light (TX), enabled for VLC transmission, sends digital information towards a receiving stage (RX), composed by an optical condenser and a dedicated amplified photodiode stage. We performed a detailed measurements campaign of VLC performances encompassing a broad set of optical condensers, and for TX-RX distances in the range 3-50 m, in terms of both effective Field of View (EFOV) and Packet Error Rate (PER). The results show several angle-dependent nontrivial behaviors for different lens sets as a function of position on the measurement grid, highlighting critical aspects for ITS applications as well as identifying most suitable optical configurations depending on the specific application and on the required EFOV. We also provide a theoretical model for both the signal intensity and the EFOV as a function of several parameters, such as distance, RX orientation and focal length of the specific condenser. To our best knowledge, there are no optical and EFOV experimental analyses for VLC systems in ITS applications in literature. Our results could be very relevant in the near future to assess a most suited solution in terms of acceptance angle when designing a VLC system for real applications, where angle-dependent misalignment effects play a non-negligible role, and we argue that they could have more general implications with respect to the pristine I2V case mentioned here.

Vehicular Communications for ITS: Standardization and Challenges

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are fast moving from connected vehicles on the road to autonomous driving. Vehicular communication is a key enabler for the deployment of advanced ITS applications such as platooning and remote vehicle control. DSRC and C-V2X are two key wireless technologies that will play a vital role in the implementation and deployment of an autonomous transport system. We review the current standardization efforts for both of these technologies with a focus on MAC and PHY layers. The automotive industry and research community have been working on new standards -- IEEE 802.11bd (for DSRC) and 5G NR V2X (for C-V2X) -- to meet the high reliability and low latency requirements of autonomous driving. We also highlight the major changes that have been made to previous standards such as IEEE 802.11p and C-V2X. Finally, we present open challenges that need to be addressed to further improve these standards for vehicular communications.

Outdoor Visible Light Communication in Intelligent Transportation Systems: Impact of Snow and Rain

A comprehensive study of outdoor visible light communication (VLC) under snow and rain effects has been conducted in this paper. This paper analyzes the expected rain attenuation of Marshal, Carbonneau, and Japan models at different precipitation levels. Snow attenuation is measured in wet and dry situations at various precipitation levels as well. Therefore, a full comparison is carried out for different attenuation effects on certain outdoor VLC design characteristics such as the maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), optical power received, bit error rate (BER), and maximum coverage area. VLC with various modulation techniques is considered. The ON–OFF Keying (OOK), L-Pulse Position Modulation (L-PPM), Inverse L-Pulse Position Modulation (I-L-PPM), and Subcarrier Binary Phase-Shift Keying (SC-BPSK) are investigated. The simulation results show a considerable difference in the information received under different weather conditions depending on the type of modulation scheme used. The simulation has been done on a two-lane road, and a green traffic light-emitting diode (LED) with a wavelength of 505 nm is used as a transmitter. A non-imaging concentrator coupled with a photodetector is considered to be a cost-effective receiver.

Vehicle Identification by Means of Radio-Frequency-Identification Cards and Magnetic Loops

At present, many detectors installed on both urban and interurban roads are capable of extracting information from vehicles such as speed, length or direction of traffic. However, very few sensors are currently able to communicate and exchange information with vehicles in real time. For this reason and due to the existing need for vehicle-infrastructure communication in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), this paper proposes the use of Radio-Frequency-Identification cards together with the magnetic loops already in operation on the road to extract and exchange information about different vehicles through bidirectional communication. This usage will lead to many applications. Therefore, different RFID cards and their operating mode and the electrical circuits necessary for accurate system operation will be presented and analyzed.

Special Issue “New Perspectives in Intelligent Transportation Systems and Mobile Communications towards a Smart Cities Context”

Intelligent transportation solutions and smart information and communication technologies will be the core of future smart cities. For this purpose, these topics have captivated noteworthy interest in the investigation and construction of cleverer communication protocols or the application of artificial intelligence in the connection of in-vehicle devices by wireless networks, and in in-vehicle services for autonomous driving using high-precision positioning and sensing systems. This special issue has focused on the collection of high-quality papers aimed at solving open technical problems and challenges typical of mobile communications for Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Physical-Layer Security and Privacy for Vehicle-to-Everything

Vehicular communications in intelligent transportation systems promise to improve traffic efficiency, road utilization, and safety. Achieving secure vehicular communications is vital for the deployment of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications. This article provides a comprehensive overview of physical-layer security (PLS) strategies employed for V2X. By exploiting the randomness and the physical characteristics of wireless channels, PLS offers reliable solutions against eavesdropper attacks as complementary approaches to cryptographic techniques. We give a brief introduction to the architecture and characteristics of V2X networks. Then the fundamental principles of PLS technology are proposed, followed by security threats in V2X. Additionally, we discuss some open issues and challenges for future research. Finally, we investigate a case study where different challenges and technologies coexist in one V2X scenario.

ASPA: Advanced Strong Pseudonym based Authentication in Intelligent Transport System.

Intelligent Transport System (ITS) uses the IEEE 802.11P standard for the wireless communication among vehicles. A wireless ad hoc network of vehicles is established to improve road safety, comfort, security, and traffic efficiency. Wireless communication in ITS leads to many security and privacy challenges. Security and privacy of ITS are important issues that demand incorporation of confidentiality, privacy, authentication, integrity, non-repudiation, and restrictive obscurity. In order to ensure the privacy of vehicles during communication, it is required that the real identity of vehicles should not be revealed. There must be robust and efficient security and privacy mechanisms for the establishment of a reliable and trustworthy network. Therefore, we propose Advanced Strong Pseudonym based Authentication (ASPA), which is a distributed framework to handle the security and privacy issues of vehicle communications in ITS. ASPA only allows vehicles with valid pseudonyms to communicate in ITS. Pseudonyms are assigned to vehicles in a secure manner. The pseudonym mappings of vehicles are stored at different locations to avoid any chance of vehicle pseudonyms certificates linkability. In addition, the most recent communication pseudonyms of a malicious vehicle are revoked and are stored in the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) that results in small size of the CRL. Therefore, the CRL size does not increase exponentially. The distributed framework of ASPA guarantees, the vehicles privacy preservation in the real identities mapping and revocation phase. The empirical results prove that ASPA is robust and efficient with low computational cost, overhead ratio, average latency, and an increased delivery ratio.

Intelligent firefly-based algorithm with Levy distribution (FF-L) for multicast routing in vehicular communications

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an interesting technology used to attain inter-vehicle communication in intelligent transportation system (ITS). In VANET, the timely and unfailing vehicular communication is an important challenge to achieved good service. So, efficient routing techniques are highly needed for proper data transmission in VANET. In this paper, we concentrate on the quality of service (QoS) constrained multicast routing problem by considering it as an NP-complete problem. Several studies reported that bio-inspired algorithms work well than the traditional algorithms to resolve the NP-complete problem. So, a firefly with Levy distribution (FF-L) algorithm is presented to manage the multicast routing problem. To prevent the FF algorithm stuck into local optima, Levy distribution is incorporated to the FF algorithm. The FF-L algorithm for multicasting routing in VANET is validated using a set of experiments on three different scenarios. The experimental values verified that the FF-L algorithm identifies the optimal routes and it can be implemented in practical scenarios where the network structure remains quite stable.

Modeling and analysis of LTE connectivity in a high mobility vehicular environment

Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology has several features that make it an attractive alternative to be used in vehicle-to-infrastructure communications for intelligent transportation systems. However, before LTE can be widely used in this context, a number of analyses must provide convincing evidence that critical network functions (e.g. resource allocation strategies) yield adequate performance. To this end, in this work, we introduce a Markov-chain based model for LTE downlink channel quality, a prime factor affecting performance. Our model comes from the analysis of a large number of measurements of LTE Cell-Specific Reference Signals that were collected through a crowdsourcing application on a motorway in the UK. The model is intended to be used in performance evaluation studies and we exemplify its use with a case study, where we estimate the downlink transmission capacity of an LTE network. We also discuss other potential applications.