Joaquim Ferreira

Andrea Tesei, Domenico Lattuca, Paolo Pagano et al.

Among the available communication systems, vehicular networks are emerging as one of the most promising and yet most challenging instantiations of mobile ad-hoc network technologies. The deployment of such networks in large scale requires the enforcement of stringent security mechanisms that need to abide by the technical, societal, legal, and economical requirements of Intelligent Transportation Systems. Authentication is an effective process for validating user identity in vehicular netoworks. However, it cannot guarantee the network security by itself. Available industrial standards do not consider methods to promptly revoke misbehaving vehicles. The only available protection consists on the \textit{revocation by expiry}, which tolerates the misbehaving vehicle to remain trusted in the system for a long time (e.g. 3 months with certificate pre-loading according to EU security policy). This poses a huge yet dangerous limitation to the security of the vehicular ecosystem. In this work we propose a Distributed Ledger-based Certificate Revocation Scheme for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) that harnesses the advantages of the underlying Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to implement a privacy-aware revocation process that is fully transparent to all participating entities and meets the critical message processing times defined by EU and US standards. An experimental validation and analysis demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme, where the DLT streamlines the revocation operation overhead and delivers an economic solution against cyber-attacks in vehicular systems.

Paulo Bartolomeu, Emanuel Vieira, Joaquim Ferreira

The imminent pervasive adoption of vehicular communication, based on dedicated short-range technology (ETSI ITS G5 or IEEE WAVE), 5G, or both, will foster a richer service ecosystem for vehicular applications. The appearance of new cryptography based solutions envisaging digital identity and currency exchange are set to stem new approaches for existing and future challenges. This paper presents a novel tolling architecture that harnesses the availability of 5G C-V2X connectivity for open road tolling using smartphones, IOTA as the digital currency and Hyperledger Indy for identity validation. An experimental feasibility analysis is used to validate the proposed architecture for secure, private and convenient electronic toll payment.

Vanessa Martins, João Rufino, Bruno Fernandes et al.

Traffic control management at intersections, a challenging and complex field of study, aims to attain a balance between safety and efficient traffic control. Nowadays, traffic control at intersections is typically done by traffic light systems which are not optimal and exhibit several drawbacks, e.g. poor efficiency and real-time adaptability. With the advent of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), vehicles are being equipped with state-of-the-art technology, enabling cooperative decision-making which will certainly overwhelm the available traffic control systems. This solution strongly penalizes users without such capabilities, namely pedestrians, cyclists and other legacy vehicles. Therefore, in this work, a prototype based on an alternative technology to the standard vehicular communications, BLE, is presented. The proposed framework aims to integrate legacy and modern vehicular communication systems into a cohesive management system. In this framework, the movements of users at intersections are managed by a centralized controller which, through the use of networked retransmitters deployed at intersections, broadcasts alerts and virtual light signalization orders. Users receive the aforementioned information on their own smart devices, discarding the need for dedicated light signalization infrastructures. Field tests, carried-out with a real-world implementation, validate the correct operation of the proposed framework.

Paulo C. Bartolomeu, Emanuel Vieira, Joaquim Ferreira

The emergence of distributed ledger technologies in the vehicular applications' arena is decisively contributing to their improvement and shaping of the public opinion about their future. The Tangle is a technology at its infancy, but showing enormous potential to become a key solution by addressing several of the blockchain's limitations. This paper focuses the use of the Tangle to improve the security of both in-vehicle and off-vehicle functions in vehicular applications. To this end, key operational performance parameters are identified, evaluated and discussed with emphasis on their limitations and potential impact in future vehicular applications.