Ram Shringar Raw

Vehicles are no longer stand-alone mechanical entities due to the advancements in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication-centric Internet of Connected Vehicles (IoV) frameworks. However, the advancement in connected vehicles leads to another serious security threat, online vehicle hijacking, where the steering control of vehicles can be hacked online. The feasibility of traditional security solutions in IoV environments is very limited, considering the intermittent network connectivity to cloud servers and vehicle-centric computing capability constraints. In this context, this paper presents a Blockchain-enabled Security Architecture for a connected vehicular Fog networking Environment (B-SAFE). Firstly, blockchain security and vehicular fog networking are introduced as preliminaries of the framework. Secondly, a three-layer architecture of B-SAFE is presented, focusing on vehicular communication, blockchain at fog nodes, and the cloud as trust and reward management for vehicles. Thirdly, details of the blockchain implementation at fog nodes is presented, along with a flowchart and algorithm. The performance of the evaluation of the proposed framework B-SAFE attests to the benefits in terms of trust, reward points, and threshold calculation.

The reliability of the communication link is quite common and challenging to handle as the topology changes frequently in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Another problem with VANETs is that the vehicles are from different manufacturers. Hence, the heterogeneity of hardware is obvious. These heterogeneity and reliability problems affect the message dissemination in VANETs. This paper aims to address these challenges by proposing a robust routing protocol capable of ensuring reliable, scalable, and heterogeneity-tolerant message dissemination in VANETs. We first introduced a hybrid hierarchical architecture based on software-defined networking (SDN) principles for VANETs, leveraging SDN’s inherent scalability and adaptability to heterogeneity. Further, a road-side unit (RSU)-assisted cloud-based location-aware hybrid routing for software-defined VANETs (SD-VANETs) that we call RC-LAHR was proposed. RC-LAHR was rigorously tested and analyzed for its performance in terms of packet delivery ratio (PDR) and end-to-end delay (EED), along with a comprehensive assessment of network traffic and load impacts on cloud infrastructure and RSUs. The routing protocol is compared with state-of-the-art protocols, Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) and Opportunistic and Position-Based Routing (OPBR). The proposed routing protocol performs well as compared to GPSR and OPBR. The result shows that the EED is reduced to 20% and the PDR is increased to 30%. The network reliability is also increased up to 5% as compared to the OPBR and GPSR.

With the revolution in technology, VANET has emerged as a new generation of technology and used globally for intelligent traffic management systems. VANET uses a PKI‐based protocol to maintain privacy and security. Still, some crucial issues remain unresolved, like blind belief in communicated messages, lack of vehicle's interest in participation, revealing the sender vehicle's identity, and maintaining integrity. The solution to these issues will prevent vehicles from propagating fake messages while concurrently protecting the confidentiality of each involved vehicle against tracking attacks. Blockchain, a peer‐to‐peer, immutable, distributed ledger‐based technology, can be adapted as a robust solution to overcome critical challenges and make VANET more secure and reliable. This paper proposes a novel blockchain‐based VANET architecture, blockchain‐based vehicular ad‐hoc network (B‐VANET), implemented on the Hyperledger Fabric platform. B‐VANET aims to secure the network by validating road events before actually updating it on the network. For validation, the trust factor of each vehicle and their past involvement in the network is maintained. Trust factor value decides the trustworthiness of a vehicle. Based on this trust factor, a dynamic endorsement policy is designed. Endorsement policy, part of the smart contract, plays a vibrant role in Hyperledger Fabric. It decides how many and which particular peers can endorse the transaction to make it valid and add it to the ledger. Multiple possible approaches to endorsement policies are identified for B‐VANET and are analyzed using the Hyperledger Caliper tool. These approaches are evaluated for data integrity, confidentiality, and real‐time system issues. An appropriate approach for the B‐VANET system is recognized, giving the best throughput and latency in all possible scenarios. It is analyzed that compared to the worst approach, the best approach achieves an almost 15% increase in throughput and reduces latency by nearly half. We also compared the performance of B‐VANET and other approaches to show that our proposed system better meets VANET's security needs.

Flying Ad‐hoc Networks (FANETs) has recently gained significant exposure for their emerging military, civil, and commercial applications. In FANETs, all Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can communicate within a restricted wireless communication range without fixed infrastructure. However, the highly dynamic nature of UAVs imposes a significant issue in FANET's communications. Therefore, designing an effective routing strategy is always necessary for sustaining appropriate network performance in FANETs. This paper is interested in modifying Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) protocol named Utility Function based Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (UF‐GPSR) protocol for FANETs. The proposed approach optimizes the greedy forwarding strategy by considering multiple vital parameters of UAVs: residual energy ratio, distance degree, movement direction, link risk degree, and speed, respectively. The proposed UF‐GPSR applies the utility function on these parameters to enhance the routing performance by selecting optimal next‐hop within the communication range. The effectiveness of the proposed work is mathematically evaluated and then simulated through the NS‐3.23 simulator. The experimental outcomes verify that the proposed routing approach enhances the packet delivery ratio and throughput while decreasing packet drop ratio and delay compared to the other routing approaches: GPSR and GPSR‐PPU.

Summary: Recently, flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) has become a core research area in wireless networks that involves multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is widely used in modern warfare for surveillance, monitoring and reconnaissance. The routing in FANETs poses a more significant challenge due to limited energy and frequent link disconnection between the UAVs. Consequently, an effective route is always required to ensure data transmission between UAVs. Therefore, this research proposes a link‐optimized cone‐assisted location (LoCaL) routing protocol for FANETs. The main goal of the proposed LoCaL is to enhance the link duration between the UAVs in which a source selects a forwarding UAV from a given set of neighbours by estimating the residual energy, link duration time and safety degree parameters. Proposed LoCaL provides better stability and less frequent route breaks between source and destination. Further, the mathematical formulation of the proposed approach is presented through the utility function to enhance the route stability by selecting all those relay UAVs in the cone‐shaped request zone, which reduces the routing overhead in discovering the route. Finally, the performance of the LoCaL has been presented through key indicators such as energy consumption, routing overhead, message delivery ratio, network lifetime and delay compared to the existing approaches.