Communication Technologies for Vehicles

In the coming years, the vehicular networks should be integrated in a global 5G network. Indeed, the 5G system aims to respond to a wide range of services including Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) and, therefore, vehicular communications. However, the current Cooperative-Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) architecture does not meet the key design recommendations of the 5G architecture design. Thus, this integration is not possible yet. Indeed, five different improvements should be considered to make it possible: network intelligence and automation, edge data processing and interoperability, network control, environment virtualization and finally security and privacy. Different papers have already proposed architectures enabling some of these improvements through the integration of different technologies in the C-ITS architecture. To highlight their strengths and their limits, these states-of-the-art solutions are compared. None of them propose a solution meeting the five identified improvements. That is why this paper presents a new architecture taking all these improvements into account. In particular, to complete the existing work, automation, security, privacy and trust are considered. To do so, a knowledge plane enhancing the functioning of the whole architecture is designed. Moreover, a security and privacy plane, strengthening trust in the vehicular environment thanks to Blockchain, is proposed. The role of the different components of this four-plane architecture is also described. Finally, some of the main challenges of the deployment of the proposed architecture are discussed.

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) aim to provide innovative solutions that can contribute to a better road management. Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA) is one of the traffic efficiency ITS services that can enhance traffic fluidity and fuel consumption economy. In this paper, we present driver reaction impact on GLOSA performance through a realistic simulation scenario taking into account the variation of penetration rate. In our work, we use vehicular network architecture ITS-G5 and we test our simple segment approach algorithm under a realistic traffic topology. Results show that driver reaction can significantly influence GLOSA performance in terms of fuel consumption and number of stopped vehicles.

C-ITS (Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems) provide nowadays a very huge amounts of data either from vehicles, roadside units, operator servers or smart-phone applications. Data need to be exploited and analyzed. In this paper, we first study the communication logs containing network messages emitted by the vehicles and the infrastructures when they communicate. We used these logs to measure the latency and evaluate if it is consistent with data analysis. Then, we try to detect driving profile using unsupervised machine learning approaches. Results both in terms of latency and of driving profile detection reveal promising issues in this new area.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are expected to play an important role in our lives. They will improve the traffic safety and bring about a revolution on the driving experience. However, these benefits are counterbalanced by possible attacks that threaten not only the vehicle’s security, but also passengers’ lives. One of the most common attacks is the Sybil attack, which is even more dangerous than others because it could be the starting point of many other attacks in VANETs. This paper proposes a distributed approach allowing the detection of Sybil attacks by using the traffic flow theory. The key idea here is that each vehicle will monitor its neighborhood in order to detect an eventual Sybil attack. This is achieved by a comparison between the real accurate speed of the vehicle and the one estimated using the V2V communications with vehicles in the vicinity. This estimated speed is obtained using the traffic flow fundamental diagram of the road’s portion where the vehicles are moving.

A mathematical model that evaluates the rate of Sybil attack detection according to the traffic density is proposed. Then, this model is validated through some numerical simulations conducted using MATLAB tool.

A Cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) is a system where mobile stations OBU (On-Board Units) exchange messages with other ITSS-V (Intelligent Transport System Station Vehicle) or RSU (Road Side Units). Messages are sent through a specific WIFI (IEEE 802.11p) denoted also ETSI ITS-G5. The efficiency of this technology has been proven in terms of latency. However, RSU are common everywhere and stations equipped with G5 interface are not widely deployed. For this reason we look for another mean to guarantee this communication. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is deployed on smartphones. We take advantage of this deployment to propose an architecture based on this protocol in order to build a Cooperative Intelligent Transport System. Cellular networks are widely deployed and can support these communications. We have adapted the ITS stack provided by the ETSI (designed for G5) to the BLE protocol.

Transport plays a fundamental role in the economic development for big cities. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, presents serious mobility problems, with a significant amount of traffic both in the city center and in its main access roads. The detailed proposal in this article aims to link Quito with several new generation technologies such as Internet of Things (Iot), Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standard for heterogeneous sensor communication, and a system of real-time notifications using the communications protocol Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT). These technologies will be used for the development of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) that takes advantage of the massive deployment of smartphones in the society as main sources of information, including Arduino and Raspberry modules to check efficient communication. This ITS bases its operation on the paradigm of the Crowdsensing, which allows to reflect more accurately the reality of the object of study when more collaborators use the system; reaching up to 30% improvement in the situational consciousness of the environment variable, the traffic.

Nowadays, aircraft can share information through satellite systems and ground infrastructure with limited capacity in terms of air traffic services, operational control, administrative control, as well as connectivity and internet services on board. In particular, ad-hoc networks present some advantages for air navigation connectivity such as distributed operation, infrastructureless (satellite or ground) and low operating costs. This new type of mobile ad-hoc networks is called AANET (Aeronautical Ad-hoc Networks), which have challenges such as very high-speed nodes, large distances between nodes, and limited bandwidth. In this work, the performance evaluation of the classic Ad-Hoc protocols AODV and OLSR, designed for traditional mobile Ad-hoc networks (MANET), is carried out in an AANET using realistic mobility patterns of Quito control area. Our results in the realistic simulation scenario show that OLSR outperforms AODV and it is a feasible candidate for communications between aircraft.

Since a few years, the number of real world applications that use drones keeps on increasing. It has also been demonstrated that swarms of heterogeneous drones can offer more features and thus support more services than single drones. While working on this paradigm, we have developed an application that makes it possible to clean a green space, using an autonomous swarm of heterogeneous drones (aerial and terrestrial). This application is called GreenSword. We describe the underlying scientific challenges of this system, our current implementation and give the retex we gained from initial experiments.

The ground robots community has setup a competition called the RoboCup [10] (Autonomous Robotics World Cup) to challenge the progress of the technology achieved by both the academy and the industry around a use case that consists in playing football. In this paper we describe a similar approach that we are setting up for autonomous aerial vehicles (drones). The use case is Volleyball.

This paper presents a description of a new emulation platform to help decrease expenses for the development of a new train-to-ground communication system for railways, which is one of the objectives of the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking. This emulator will interface with the T2G communication prototypes at IP layer and will consider many railway-specific services, perturbations and physical layer scenarios. It will combine modern approaches for testing like hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop in order to mimic railways environment and radio access technologies on an efficient way. In this paper we explain all these aspects, beginning with the railway particular circumstances to be taken into account and ending with an explanation of the approach for the development of the emulator.