Information collection algorithm for vehicular ad-hoc networks (application domain: Urban Traffic Wireless Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs))

Vehicle to vehicle communication (V2VC) is one of the modern approaches for exchanging and generating traffic information with (yet to be realized) potential to improve road safety, driving comfort and traffic control. In this research, we present a novel algorithm which is based on V2V communication, uses in-vehicle sensor information and in collaboration with the other vehicles' sensor information can detect road conditions and determine the geographical area where this road condition exists – e.g. geographical area where there is traffic density, unusual traffic behaviour, a range of weather conditions (raining), etc. The algorithms' built-in automatic geographical restriction of the data collection, aggregation and dissemination mechanisms allows warning messages to be received by any car, not necessarily sharing the identified road condition, which may then be used to identify the optimum route taken by the vehicle e.g. avoid bottlenecks or dangerous areas including accidents or congestions on their current routes. This research covers the middle ground between MANET [1] and collaborative data generation based on knowledge granularity (aggregation). It investigates the possibility of designing, implementing and modelling of the functionality of an algorithm (as part of the design of an intelligent node in an Intelligent Transportation System - ITS) that ensures active participation in the formation, routing and general network support of MANETs and also helps in-car traffic information and real-time control generation and distribution. The work is natural extension of the efforts of several large EU projects like DRIVE [2], GST [3] and SAFESPOT [4]

Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks - OMCO NET

The mini conference “Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks” focuses on advanced methods for search and optimisation applied to wireless communication networks. It is sponsored by Research & Enterprise Fund Southampton Solent University. The conference strives to widen knowledge on advanced search methods capable of optimisation of wireless communications networks. The aim is to provide a forum for exchange of recent knowledge, new ideas and trends in this progressive and challenging area. The conference will popularise new successful approaches on resolving hard tasks such as minimisation of transmit power, cooperative and optimal routing

Utilising in-vehicle information to detect traffic conditions in vehicular ad-hoc networks

In the last decade, cooperative vehicular network has been one of the most studied areas for developing the intelligent transportation systems (ITS). It is considered as an important approach to share the periodic traffic situations over vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to improve efficiency and safety over the road. In addition to the uses of ITS, VANETs will contribute in service access, cooperative driving, entertainment and navigation for cars of the future. Vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communication are two distinct avenues that make possible efficient delivery of messages through direct wireless transmissions in traffic regions. Furthermore, promising quality of communication performance is desirable for a communication system composed mostly if roaming participants; such a system needs to be dynamic, flexible and infrastructure-less. Thus VANET architecture is a natural fit for ITS. However, there are a number of issues in exchanging traffic data over high mobility of VANET, such as broadcast storms, hidden nodes and network instability. Therefore, vehicular traffic efficiency applications have been investigated recently using VANET. This aspect of research is primarily concerned with increasing the traffic awareness over roads. In this thesis, a novel model, Efficient Traffic Conditions Detection (ETraCD) is proposed to detect the traffic conditions utilising vehicles’ characteristics and in-vehicles sensors information to evaluate traffic situations that are gathered from the nodes (vehicles) in VANET. The model revolves around the core idea to what extent we will be considering the traffic characteristics between groups of cars rather than individual cars. This does not concern the physical transmission of data but the data processing in the network. More precisely, vehicles are clustered into traffic groups based on the similarity of sensors’s data. ETraCD (a) divides the situations of vehicles into clusters, (b) designs a set of metrics to get the correlations among vehicles and (c) detects the traffic condition in certain areas. These approaches have been simulated in NS3 network simulator to investigate the performance of stability of the network, latency, and the accuracy of traffic situations detection. The proposed model applies V2V clustering paradigm for detecting traffic conditions, it has been implemented and its features investigated through simulation runs. It shows the benefit of using the vehicular sensors informations such as ABS, windscreen lights and so on based on V2V communication to provide an efficient traffic conclusion in urban environment. Experiments also show improved overall performance when compared to previous protocols

A holistic framework to improve message delivery in vehicular ad-hoc networks

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are wireless communication networks for vehicles that do not require any fixed or central infrastructure. It forms an important part of the intelligent transport system (ITS) which is the convergence of telecommunications, computing and wireless systems with the aim of improving transportation regarding efficiency, safety and management. In addition to the uses of ITS, VANETs will contribute in service access, cooperative driving, entertainment and navigation for cars of the future. Due to the varied use of VANETs, it becomes slightly cumbersome having a "one-fits-all" solution to challenges facing message dissemination in VANETs. While some applications might require a fast and reliable way of disseminating messages amongst members of the network, other applications might be more delay-tolerant without adding extra risks to the dependents of such application. Data dissemination methods are therefore important aspects of VANET that ensure messages are delivered to areas beyond the scope of the originating node. However, several types of research have shown that message propagation for each geographical route is unique to that route, owing to the number of network participants, their speed, and distribution of objects on that route. Many research designs do not consider the vehicles and their traffic characteristics and as such vehicular ad-hoc networks are under-utilised. One of the problems present in the emerging field of vehicular communications is that of optimally disseminating messages within the network to support services such as collision warnings, traffic management, and driverless vehicles amongst others. This problem is a unique research area which involves the entire network and its ability to support the efficient propagation of data. Message dissemination in VANETs could be viewed as routing on much higher macroscopic level, however, the techniques usually applied to data routing on a microscopic level does not utilise available data to efficiently disseminate messages within a vehicular ad-hoc network. Some work done in literature addresses a few constraints at a time; for example a focus on junctions, thereby ignoring vast areas of the wireless network which could have been otherwise used to improve the overall ability to efficiently deliver messages within the road network. For this reason, this thesis investigates the effects of several vehicular factors, how these factors affect the quality of the wireless network on each road, and how this knowledge is advantageous in improving the delivery of messages from a source to its destination within a vehicular ad-hoc network. In proposing a solution that uses otherwise largely ignored road traffic data to improving efficient message delivery, a holistic framework that utilises road traffic information in a unique way is presented. The quality of a wireless network for each road in terms of packets delivered is seen to be influenced by the number of vehicles and their speed which is seen to be unique for each road segment; therefore, allowing the generation of a wireless packet delivery map offline (wireless network map) based on varying number of vehicles and speeds. Current road traffic data can then be compared against the wireless map in order to determine which routes have good network quality and hence the ability to support better message dissemination. This framework is also aimed at helping to fully utilise the VANET bandwidth available by reducing network noise caused by multiple retransmissions of nodes in the network by picking the right path and using only the furthest node on each path. It aims to reduce messages delivery failure, reduce delays in the message delivery where possible and improve the utilisation of vehicles as communication nodes and relays. The Framework for Improving Message Delivery in VANETs (FIMDEV) proposed in this thesis shows the benefit of using the wireless communication database information processed by each vehicle to support message delivery from source to destination within the VANET. Experiments show improved overall packet delivery ratio when compared to standalone routing protocols as FIMDEV uses the wireless network database along with a set of rules for propagating messages within the network

Situational Awareness Enhancement for Connected and Automated Vehicle Systems

Recent developments in the area of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) have boosted the interest in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs). While ITS is intended to resolve and mitigate serious traffic issues such as passenger and pedestrian fatalities, accidents, and traffic congestion; these goals are only achievable by vehicles that are fully aware of their situation and surroundings in real-time. Therefore, connected and automated vehicle systems heavily rely on communication technologies to create a real-time map of their surrounding environment and extend their range of situational awareness. In this dissertation, we propose novel approaches to enhance situational awareness, its applications, and effective sharing of information among vehicles.;The communication technology for CAVs is known as vehicle-to-everything (V2x) communication, in which vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) have been targeted for the first round of deployment based on dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) devices for vehicles and road-side transportation infrastructures. Wireless communication among these entities creates self-organizing networks, known as Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). Due to the mobile, rapidly changing, and intrinsically error-prone nature of VANETs, traditional network architectures are generally unsatisfactory to address VANETs fundamental performance requirements. Therefore, we first investigate imperfections of the vehicular communication channel and propose a new modeling scheme for large-scale and small-scale components of the communication channel in dense vehicular networks. Subsequently, we introduce an innovative method for a joint modeling of the situational awareness and networking components of CAVs in a single framework. Based on these two models, we propose a novel network-aware broadcast protocol for fast broadcasting of information over multiple hops to extend the range of situational awareness. Afterward, motivated by the most common and injury-prone pedestrian crash scenarios, we extend our work by proposing an end-to-end Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) framework to provide situational awareness and hazard detection for vulnerable road users. Finally, as humans are the most spontaneous and influential entity for transportation systems, we design a learning-based driver behavior model and integrate it into our situational awareness component. Consequently, higher accuracy of situational awareness and overall system performance are achieved by exchange of more useful information

Design and Evaluation of a Traffic Safety System based on Vehicular Networks for the Next Generation of Intelligent Vehicles

La integración de las tecnologías de las telecomunicaciones en el sector del automóvil permitirá a los vehículos intercambiar información mediante Redes Vehiculares, ofreciendo numerosas posibilidades. Esta tesis se centra en la mejora de la seguridad vial y la reducción de la siniestralidad mediante Sistemas Inteligentes de Transporte (ITS). El primer paso consiste en obtener una difusión eficiente de los mensajes de advertencia sobre situaciones potencialmente peligrosas. Hemos desarrollado un marco para simular el intercambio de mensajes entre vehículos, utilizado para proponer esquemas eficientes de difusión. También demostramos que la disposición de las calles tiene gran influencia sobre la eficiencia del proceso. Nuestros algoritmos de difusión son parte de una arquitectura más amplia (e-NOTIFY) capaz de detectar accidentes de tráfico e informar a los servicios de emergencia. El desarrollo y evaluación de un prototipo demostró la viabilidad del sistema y cómo podría ayudar a reducir el número de víctimas en carretera

Secure and Authenticated Message Dissemination in Vehicular ad hoc Networks and an Incentive-Based Architecture for Vehicular Cloud

Vehicular ad hoc Networks (VANETs) allow vehicles to form a self-organized network. VANETs are likely to be widely deployed in the future, given the interest shown by industry in self-driving cars and satisfying their customers various interests. Problems related to Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) such as routing, security, etc.have been extensively studied. Even though VANETs are special type of MANETs, solutions proposed for MANETs cannot be directly applied to VANETs because all problems related to MANETs have been studied for small networks. Moreover, in MANETs, nodes can move randomly. On the other hand, movement of nodes in VANETs are constrained to roads and the number of nodes in VANETs is large and covers typically large area. The following are the contributions of the thesis. Secure, authenticated, privacy preserving message dissemination in VANETs: When vehicles in VANET observe phenomena such as accidents, icy road condition, etc., they need to disseminate this information to vehicles in appropriate areas so the drivers of those vehicles can take appropriate action. When such messages are disseminated, the authenticity of the vehicles disseminating such messages should be verified while at the same time the anonymity of the vehicles should be preserved. Moreover, to punish the vehicles spreading malicious messages, authorities should be able to trace such messages to their senders when necessary. For this, we present an efficient protocol for the dissemination of authenticated messages. Incentive-based architecture for vehicular cloud: Due to the advantages such as exibility and availability, interest in cloud computing has gained lot of attention in recent years. Allowing vehicles in VANETs to store the collected information in the cloud would facilitate other vehicles to retrieve this information when they need. In this thesis, we present a secure incentive-based architecture for vehicular cloud. Our architecture allows vehicles to collect and store information in the cloud; it also provides a mechanism for rewarding vehicles that contributing to the cloud. Privacy preserving message dissemination in VANETs: Sometimes, it is sufficient to ensure the anonymity of the vehicles disseminating messages in VANETs. We present a privacy preserving message dissemination protocol for VANETs

Routing schemes in FANETs: a survey

Flying ad hoc network (FANET) is a self-organizing wireless network that enables inexpensive, flexible, and easy-to-deploy flying nodes, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to communicate among themselves in the absence of fixed network infrastructure. FANET is one of the emerging networks that has an extensive range of next-generation applications. Hence, FANET plays a significant role in achieving application-based goals. Routing enables the flying nodes to collaborate and coordinate among themselves and to establish routes to radio access infrastructure, particularly FANET base station (BS). With a longer route lifetime, the effects of link disconnections and network partitions reduce. Routing must cater to two main characteristics of FANETs that reduce the route lifetime. Firstly, the collaboration nature requires the flying nodes to exchange messages and to coordinate among themselves, causing high energy consumption. Secondly, the mobility pattern of the flying nodes is highly dynamic in a three-dimensional space and they may be spaced far apart, causing link disconnection. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the limited research work of routing schemes in FANETs. Different aspects, including objectives, challenges, routing metrics, characteristics, and performance measures, are covered. Furthermore, we present open issues

Location based services in wireless ad hoc networks

In this dissertation, we investigate location based services in wireless ad hoc networks from four different aspects - i) location privacy in wireless sensor networks (privacy), ii) end-to-end secure communication in randomly deployed wireless sensor networks (security), iii) quality versus latency trade-off in content retrieval under ad hoc node mobility (performance) and iv) location clustering based Sybil attack detection in vehicular ad hoc networks (trust). The first contribution of this dissertation is in addressing location privacy in wireless sensor networks. We propose a non-cooperative sensor localization algorithm showing how an external entity can stealthily invade into the location privacy of sensors in a network. We then design a location privacy preserving tracking algorithm for defending against such adversarial localization attacks. Next we investigate secure end-to-end communication in randomly deployed wireless sensor networks. Here, due to lack of control on sensors\u27 locations post deployment, pre-fixing pairwise keys between sensors is not feasible especially under larger scale random deployments. Towards this premise, we propose differentiated key pre-distribution for secure end-to-end secure communication, and show how it improves existing routing algorithms. Our next contribution is in addressing quality versus latency trade-off in content retrieval under ad hoc node mobility. We propose a two-tiered architecture for efficient content retrieval in such environment. Finally we investigate Sybil attack detection in vehicular ad hoc networks. A Sybil attacker can create and use multiple counterfeit identities risking trust of a vehicular ad hoc network, and then easily escape the location of the attack avoiding detection. We propose a location based clustering of nodes leveraging vehicle platoon dispersion for detection of Sybil attacks in vehicular ad hoc networks --Abstract, page iii