Hybrid-Vehfog: A Robust Approach for Reliable Dissemination of Critical Messages in Connected Vehicles

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) enable efficient communication between vehicles with the aim of improving road safety. However, the growing number of vehicles in dense regions and obstacle shadowing regions like Manhattan and other downtown areas leads to frequent disconnection problems resulting in disrupted radio wave propagation between vehicles. To address this issue and to transmit critical messages between vehicles and drones deployed from service vehicles to overcome road incidents and obstacles, we proposed a hybrid technique based on fog computing called Hybrid-Vehfog to disseminate messages in obstacle shadowing regions, and multi-hop technique to disseminate messages in non-obstacle shadowing regions. Our proposed algorithm dynamically adapts to changes in an environment and benefits in efficiency with robust drone deployment capability as needed. Performance of Hybrid-Vehfog is carried out in Network Simulator (NS-2) and Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) simulators. The results showed that Hybrid-Vehfog outperformed Cloud-assisted Message Downlink Dissemination Scheme (CMDS), Cross-Layer Broadcast Protocol (CLBP), PEer-to-Peer protocol for Allocated REsource (PrEPARE), Fog-Named Data Networking (NDN) with mobility, and flooding schemes at all vehicle densities and simulation times

An IOT-enabled System for Marine Data Acquisition and Cartography

Current satellite communication remains very expensive and impractical for most small to mid-sized vessels, and at the same time marine wireless networking is lack of network coverage. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel IOT (Internet of Things) enabled system for marine data acquisition and cartography based on Ship Ad-hoc Networks (SANET’s). Ships are equipped with Very High Frequency (VHF) radios and several sensors such as sea depth, temperature, wind speed and direction, etc. The collected sensory data is sent to 5G edge clouds incorporated at sink/base station nodes on shore, and ultimately aggregated at a central cloud on the internet to produce up to date cartography. The routing protocols deployed are DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector), AODV (Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector), AOMDV (Ad hoc On-Demand Multipath Distance Vector) and DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) protocols, which are very popular in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET’s) and compatible with multi hop routing environments and scalability towards increased traffic and mobility. Simulation results verify the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed system that has packet delivery rates of up to 80% at shore base stations

Using Distributed Ledger Technologies in VANETs to Achieve Trusted Intelligent Transportation Systems

With the recent advancements in the networking realm of computers as well as achieving real-time communication between devices over the Internet, IoT (Internet of Things) devices have been on the rise; collecting, sharing, and exchanging data with other connected devices or databases online, enabling all sorts of communications and operations without the need for human intervention, oversight, or control. This has caused more computer-based systems to get integrated into the physical world, inching us closer towards developing smart cities. The automotive industry, alongside other software developers and technology companies have been at the forefront of this advancement towards achieving smart cities. Currently, transportation networks need to be revamped to utilize the massive amounts of data being generated by the public’s vehicle’s on-board devices, as well as other integrated sensors on public transit systems, local roads, and highways. This will create an interconnected ecosystem that can be leveraged to improve traffic efficiency and reliability. Currently, Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) communications, all play a major role in supporting road safety, traffic efficiency, and energy savings. To protect these devices and the networks they form from being targets of cyber-related attacks, this paper presents ideas on how to leverage distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to establish secure communication between vehicles that is decentralized, trustless, and immutable. Incorporating IOTA’s protocols, as well as utilizing Ethereum’s smart contracts functionality and application concepts with VANETs, all interoperating with Hyperledger’s Fabric framework, several novel ideas can be implemented to improve traffic safety and efficiency. Such a modular design also opens up the possibility to further investigate use cases of the blockchain and distributed ledger technologies in creating a decentralized intelligent transportation system (ITS)

MobileTrust: Secure Knowledge Integration in VANETs

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANET) are becoming popular due to the emergence of the Internet of Things and ambient intelligence applications. In such networks, secure resource sharing functionality is accomplished by incorporating trust schemes. Current solutions adopt peer-to-peer technologies that can cover the large operational area. However, these systems fail to capture some inherent properties of VANETs, such as fast and ephemeral interaction, making robust trust evaluation of crowdsourcing challenging. In this article, we propose MobileTrust—a hybrid trust-based system for secure resource sharing in VANETs. The proposal is a breakthrough in centralized trust computing that utilizes cloud and upcoming 5G technologies to provide robust trust establishment with global scalability. The ad hoc communication is energy-efficient and protects the system against threats that are not countered by the current settings. To evaluate its performance and effectiveness, MobileTrust is modelled in the SUMO simulator and tested on the traffic features of the small-size German city of Eichstatt. Similar schemes are implemented in the same platform to provide a fair comparison. Moreover, MobileTrust is deployed on a typical embedded system platform and applied on a real smart car installation for monitoring traffic and road-state parameters of an urban application. The proposed system is developed under the EU-founded THREAT-ARREST project, to provide security, privacy, and trust in an intelligent and energy-aware transportation scenario, bringing closer the vision of sustainable circular economy

Evolution of VANETS to IoV: Applications and Challenges

Advancement in wireless communication technology along with the evolution of low power computational devices, have given rise to the Internet of things paradigm. This paradigm is transforming conventional VANETs into Internet-of- vehicles. This transition has led to a substantial commercial interest; as a result, there has been a significant boost in the field of the Internet of vehicles during the past few years. IoV promises a wide range of applications of commercial interest as well as public entertainment and convenience (collision warning systems, on-demand in-car entertainment, smart parking, traffic information). Applications related to vehicular and passenger safety are particularly of great commercial as well as a research interest as such IoV is going to be a core component in implementing the smart city concept. This paper gives an overview of the transition of conventional VANETs to IoV and highlights the potential applications and challenges faced by the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) paradigm

Security in Vehicles With IoT by Prioritization Rules, Vehicle Certificates, and Trust Management

[EN] The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) provides new opportunities for the coordination of vehicles for enhancing safety and transportation performance. Vehicles can be coordinated for avoiding collisions by communicating their positions when near to each other, in which the information flow is indexed by their geographical positions or the ones in road maps. Vehicles can also be coordinated to ameliorate traffic jams by sharing their locations and destinations. Vehicles can apply optimization algorithms to reduce the overuse of certain streets without excessively enlarging the paths. In this way, traveling time can be reduced. However, IoV also brings security challenges, such as keeping safe from virtual hijacking. In particular, vehicles should detect and isolate the hijacked vehicles ignoring their communications. The current work presents a technique for enhancing security by applying certain prioritization rules, using digital certificates, and applying trust and reputation policies for detecting hijacked vehicles. We tested the proposed approach with a novel agent-based simulator about security in Internet of Things (IoT) for vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The experiments focused on the scenario of avoidance of collisions with hijacked vehicles misinforming other vehicles. The results showed that the current approach increased the average speed of vehicles with a 64.2% when these are giving way to other vehicles in a crossing by means of IoT.This work was supported by Harvard University (stay funded by T49_17R), University of Zaragoza (JIUZ-2017-TEC-03), Foundation Bancaria Ibercaja, Foundation CAI (IT1/18), University Foundation Antonio Gargallo (call 2017), and "Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" in the "Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica de Excelencia, Subprograma Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento" (TIN2017-84802-C2-1-P).García-Magariño, I.; Sendra, S.; Lacuesta, R.; Lloret, J. (2019). Security in Vehicles With IoT by Prioritization Rules, Vehicle Certificates, and Trust Management. IEEE Internet of Things. 6(4):5927-5934. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2018.2871255S592759346

Mobile ad hoc networks in transportation data collection and dissemination

The field of transportation is rapidly changing with new opportunities for systems solutions and emerging technologies. The global economic impact of congestion and accidents are significant. Improved means are needed to solve them. Combined with the increasing numbers of vehicles on the road, the net economic impact is measured in the many billions of dollars. Promising methodologies explored in this thesis include the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET). Interconnecting vehicles using Dedicated Short Range Communication technology (DSRC) brings many benefits. Integrating DSRC into roadway vehicles offers the promise of reducing the problems of congestion and accidents; however, it comes with risks such as loss of connectivity due to power outages as well as controlling and managing loading in such networks. Energy consumption of vehicle communication equipment is a crucial factor in high availability sensor networks. Sending critical emergency messaged through linked vehicles requires that there always be energy and communication reserves. Two algorithms are described. The first controls energy consumption to guarantee an energy reserve for sending alert signals. The second exploits Long Term Evolution (LTE) to guarantee a reliable communication path