Overview of Polkadot and its Design Considerations

In this paper we describe the design components of the heterogenous multi-chain protocol Polkadot and explain how these components help Polkadot address some of the existing shortcomings of blockchain technologies. At present, a vast number of blockchain projects have been introduced and employed with various features that are not necessarily designed to work with each other. This makes it difficult for users to utilise a large number of applications on different blockchain projects. Moreover, with the increase in number of projects the security that each one is providing individually becomes weaker. Polkadot aims to provide a scalable and interoperable framework for multiple chains with pooled security that is achieved by the collection of components described in this paper

Design of an adaptive congestion control protocol for reliable vehicle safety communication

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Regional Data Archiving and Management for Northeast Illinois

This project studies the feasibility and implementation options for establishing a regional data archiving system to help monitor and manage traffic operations and planning for the northeastern Illinois region. It aims to provide a clear guidance to the regional transportation agencies, from both technical and business perspectives, about building such a comprehensive transportation information system. Several implementation alternatives are identified and analyzed. This research is carried out in three phases. In the first phase, existing documents related to ITS deployments in the broader Chicago area are summarized, and a thorough review is conducted of similar systems across the country. Various stakeholders are interviewed to collect information on all data elements that they store, including the format, system, and granularity. Their perception of a data archive system, such as potential benefits and costs, is also surveyed. In the second phase, a conceptual design of the database is developed. This conceptual design includes system architecture, functional modules, user interfaces, and examples of usage. In the last phase, the possible business models for the archive system to sustain itself are reviewed. We estimate initial capital and recurring operational/maintenance costs for the system based on realistic information on the hardware, software, labor, and resource requirements. We also identify possible revenue opportunities. A few implementation options for the archive system are summarized in this report; namely: 1. System hosted by a partnering agency 2. System contracted to a university 3. System contracted to a national laboratory 4. System outsourced to a service provider The costs, advantages and disadvantages for each of these recommended options are also provided.ICT-R27-22published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Assessing the Competing Characteristics of Privacy and Safety within Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

The introduction of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication has the promise of decreasing vehicle collisions, congestion, and emissions. However, this technology places safety and privacy at odds; an increase of safety applications will likely result in the decrease of consumer privacy. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed the Security Credential Management System (SCMS) as the back end infrastructure for maintaining, distributing, and revoking vehicle certificates attached to every Basic Safety Message (BSM). This Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) scheme is designed around the philosophy of maintaining user privacy through the separation of functions to prevent any one subcomponent from identifying users. However, because of the high precision of the data elements within each message this design cannot prevent large scale third-party BSM collection and pseudonym linking resulting in privacy loss. In addition, this philosophy creates an extraordinarily complex and heavily distributed system. In response to this difficulty, this thesis proposes a data ambiguity method to bridge privacy and safety within the context of interconnected vehicles. The objective in doing so is to preserve both Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety applications and consumer privacy. A Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) metric classification is introduced that explores five fundamental pillars of VANETs. These pillars (Safety, Privacy, Cost, Efficiency, Stability) are applied to four different systems: Non-V2V environment, the aforementioned SCMS, the group-pseudonym based Vehicle Based Security System (VBSS), and VBSS with Dithering (VBSS-D) which includes the data ambiguity method of dithering. By using these evaluation criteria, the advantages and disadvantages of bringing each system to fruition is showcased

On the Security of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Protocol

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is the communications protocol currently being rolled out as part of next generation air transportation systems. As the heart of modern air traffic control, it will play an essential role in the protection of two billion passengers per year, besides being crucial to many other interest groups in aviation. The inherent lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has long been a topic in both the aviation circles and in the academic community. Due to recently published proof-of-concept attacks, the topic is becoming ever more pressing, especially with the deadline for mandatory implementation in most airspaces fast approaching. This survey first summarizes the attacks and problems that have been reported in relation to ADS-B security. Thereafter, it surveys both the theoretical and practical efforts which have been previously conducted concerning these issues, including possible countermeasures. In addition, the survey seeks to go beyond the current state of the art and gives a detailed assessment of security measures which have been developed more generally for related wireless networks such as sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks, including a taxonomy of all considered approaches.Comment: Survey, 22 Pages, 21 Figure

SECURITY, PRIVACY AND APPLICATIONS IN VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

With wireless vehicular communications, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) enable numerous applications to enhance traffic safety, traffic efficiency, and driving experience. However, VANETs also impose severe security and privacy challenges which need to be thoroughly investigated. In this dissertation, we enhance the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, by 1) designing application-driven security and privacy solutions for VANETs, and 2) designing appealing VANET applications with proper security and privacy assurance. First, the security and privacy challenges of VANETs with most application significance are identified and thoroughly investigated. With both theoretical novelty and realistic considerations, these security and privacy schemes are especially appealing to VANETs. Specifically, multi-hop communications in VANETs suffer from packet dropping, packet tampering, and communication failures which have not been satisfyingly tackled in literature. Thus, a lightweight reliable and faithful data packet relaying framework (LEAPER) is proposed to ensure reliable and trustworthy multi-hop communications by enhancing the cooperation of neighboring nodes. Message verification, including both content and signature verification, generally is computation-extensive and incurs severe scalability issues to each node. The resource-aware message verification (RAMV) scheme is proposed to ensure resource-aware, secure, and application-friendly message verification in VANETs. On the other hand, to make VANETs acceptable to the privacy-sensitive users, the identity and location privacy of each node should be properly protected. To this end, a joint privacy and reputation assurance (JPRA) scheme is proposed to synergistically support privacy protection and reputation management by reconciling their inherent conflicting requirements. Besides, the privacy implications of short-time certificates are thoroughly investigated in a short-time certificates-based privacy protection (STCP2) scheme, to make privacy protection in VANETs feasible with short-time certificates. Secondly, three novel solutions, namely VANET-based ambient ad dissemination (VAAD), general-purpose automatic survey (GPAS), and VehicleView, are proposed to support the appealing value-added applications based on VANETs. These solutions all follow practical application models, and an incentive-centered architecture is proposed for each solution to balance the conflicting requirements of the involved entities. Besides, the critical security and privacy challenges of these applications are investigated and addressed with novel solutions. Thus, with proper security and privacy assurance, these solutions show great application significance and economic potentials to VANETs. Thus, by enhancing the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, this dissertation fills the gap between the existing theoretic research and the realistic implementation of VANETs, facilitating the realistic deployment of VANETs

Detecting Non-Line of Sight to Prevent Accidents in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

There are still many challenges in the field of VANETs that encouraged researchers to conduct further investigation in this field to meet these challenges. The issue pertaining to routing protocols such as delivering the warning messages to the vehicles facing Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) situations without causing the storm problem and channel contention, is regarded as a serious dilemma which is required to be tackled in VANET, especially in congested environments. This requires the designing of an efficient mechanism of routing protocol that can broadcast the warning messages from the emergency vehicles to the vehicles under NLOS, reducing the overhead and increasing the packet delivery ratio with a reduced time delay and channel utilisation. The main aim of this work is to develop the novel routing protocol for a high-density environment in VANET through utilisation of its high mobility features, aid of the sensors such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and Navigation System (NS). In this work, the cooperative approach has been used to develop the routing protocol called the Co-operative Volunteer Protocol (CVP), which uses volunteer vehicles to disseminate the warning message from the source to the target vehicle under NLOS issue; this also increases the packet delivery ratio, detection of NLOS and resolution of NLOS by delivering the warning message successfully to the vehicle under NLOS, thereby causing a direct impact on the reduction of collisions between vehicles in normal mode and emergency mode on the road near intersections or on highways. The cooperative approach adopted for warning message dissemination reduced the rebroadcast rate of messages, thereby decreasing significantly the storm issue and the channel contention. A novel architecture has been developed by utilising the concept of a Context-Aware System (CAS), which clarifies the OBU components and their interaction with each other in order to collect data and take the decisions based on the sensed circumstances. The proposed architecture has been divided into three main phases: sensing, processing and acting. The results obtained from the validation of the proposed CVP protocol using the simulator EstiNet under specific conditions and parameters showed that performance of the proposed protocol is better than that of the GRANT protocol with regard to several metrics such as packet delivery ratio, neighbourhood awareness, channel utilisation, overhead and latency. It is also successfully shown that the proposed CVP could detect the NLOS situation and solves it effectively and efficiently for both the intersection scenario in urban areas and the highway scenario

Coordination of Cooperative Autonomous Vehicles Toward safer and more efficient road transportation

While intelligent transportation systems come in many shapes and sizes, arguably the most transformational realization will be the autonomous vehicle. As such vehicles become commercially available in the coming years, first on dedicated roads and under specific conditions, and later on all public roads at all times, a phase transition will occur. Once a sufficient number of autonomous vehicles is deployed, the opportunity for explicit coordination appears. This article treats this challenging network control problem, which lies at the intersection of control theory, signal processing, and wireless communication. We provide an overview of the state of the art, while at the same time highlighting key research directions for the coming decades

Application of automatic vehicle location in law enforcement: An introductory planning guide

A set of planning guidelines for the application of automatic vehicle location (AVL) to law enforcement is presented. Some essential characteristics and applications of AVL are outlined; systems in the operational or planning phases are discussed. Requirements analysis, system concept design, implementation planning, and performance and cost modeling are described and demonstrated with numerous examples. A detailed description of a typical law enforcement AVL system, and a list of vendor sources are given in appendixes

Zuverlässige und Energieeffiziente gemischt-kritische Echtzeit On-Chip Systeme

Multi- and many-core embedded systems are increasingly becoming the target for many applications that require high performance under varying conditions. A resulting challenge is the control, and reliable operation of such complex multiprocessing architectures under changes, e.g., high temperature and degradation. In mixed-criticality systems where many applications with varying criticalities are consolidated on the same execution platform, fundamental isolation requirements to guarantee non-interference of critical functions are crucially important. While Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) are the prevalent solution to provide scalable and efficient interconnects for the multiprocessing architectures, their associated energy consumption has immensely increased. Specifically, hard real-time NoCs must manifest limited energy consumption as thermal runaway in such a core shared resource jeopardizes the whole system guarantees. Thus, dynamic energy management of NoCs, as opposed to the related work static solutions, is highly necessary to save energy and decrease temperature, while preserving essential temporal requirements. In this thesis, we introduce a centralized management to provide energy-aware NoCs for hard real-time systems. The design relies on an energy control network, developed on top of an existing switch arbitration network to allow isolation between energy optimization and data transmission. The energy control layer includes local units called Power-Aware NoC controllers that dynamically optimize NoC energy depending on the global state and applications’ temporal requirements. Furthermore, to adapt to abnormal situations that might occur in the system due to degradation, we extend the concept of NoC energy control to include the entire system scope. That is, online resource management employing hierarchical control layers to treat system degradation (imminent core failures) is supported. The mechanism applies system reconfiguration that involves workload migration. For mixed-criticality systems, it allows flexible boundaries between safety-critical and non-critical subsystems to safely apply the reconfiguration, preserving fundamental safety requirements and temporal predictability. Simulation and formal analysis-based experiments on various realistic usecases and benchmarks are conducted showing significant improvements in NoC energy-savings and in treatment of system degradation for mixed-criticality systems improving dependability over the status quo.Eingebettete Many- und Multi-core-Systeme werden zunehmend das Ziel für Anwendungen, die hohe Anfordungen unter unterschiedlichen Bedinungen haben. Für solche hochkomplexed Multi-Prozessor-Systeme ist es eine grosse Herausforderung zuverlässigen Betrieb sicherzustellen, insbesondere wenn sich die Umgebungseinflüsse verändern. In Systeme mit gemischter Kritikalität, in denen viele Anwendungen mit unterschiedlicher Kritikalität auf derselben Ausführungsplattform bedient werden müssen, sind grundlegende Isolationsanforderungen zur Gewährleistung der Nichteinmischung kritischer Funktionen von entscheidender Bedeutung. Während On-Chip Netzwerke (NoCs) häufig als skalierbare Verbindung für die Multiprozessor-Architekturen eingesetzt werden, ist der damit verbundene Energieverbrauch immens gestiegen. Daher sind dynamische Plattformverwaltungen, im Gegensatz zu den statischen, zwingend notwendig, um ein System an die oben genannten Veränderungen anzupassen und gleichzeitig Timing zu gewährleisten. In dieser Arbeit entwickeln wir energieeffiziente NoCs für harte Echtzeitsysteme. Das Design basiert auf einem Energiekontrollnetzwerk, das auf einem bestehenden Switch-Arbitration-Netzwerk entwickelt wurde, um eine Isolierung zwischen Energieoptimierung und Datenübertragung zu ermöglichen. Die Energiesteuerungsschicht umfasst lokale Einheiten, die als Power-Aware NoC-Controllers bezeichnet werden und die die NoC-Energie in Abhängigkeit vom globalen Zustand und den zeitlichen Anforderungen der Anwendungen optimieren. Darüber hinaus wird das Konzept der NoC-Energiekontrolle zur Anpassung an Anomalien, die aufgrund von Abnutzung auftreten können, auf den gesamten Systemumfang ausgedehnt. Online- Ressourcenverwaltungen, die hierarchische Kontrollschichten zur Behandlung Abnutzung (drohender Kernausfälle) einsetzen, werden bereitgestellt. Bei Systemen mit gemischter Kritikalität erlaubt es flexible Grenzen zwischen sicherheitskritischen und unkritischen Subsystemen, um die Rekonfiguration sicher anzuwenden, wobei grundlegende Sicherheitsanforderungen erhalten bleiben und Timing Vorhersehbarkeit. Experimente werden auf der Basis von Simulationen und formalen Analysen zu verschiedenen realistischen Anwendungsfallen und Benchmarks durchgeführt, die signifikanten Verbesserungen bei On-Chip Netzwerke-Energieeinsparungen und bei der Behandlung von Abnutzung für Systeme mit gemischter Kritikalität zur Verbesserung die Systemstabilität gegenüber dem bisherigen Status quo zeigen