Elsevier

Vehicular Communications

Volume 20, December 2019, 100182
Vehicular Communications

A survey on internet of vehicles: Applications, security issues & solutions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vehcom.2019.100182Get rights and content

Abstract

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an emerging concept in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to enhance the existing capabilities of VANETs by integrating with the Internet of Things (IoT). IoV has dominated the transportation systems due to numerous special traits like dynamic topological structures, huge network scale, reliable internet connection, compatibility with personal devices and high processing capability, etc. In this review, an in-depth survey of IoV is carried out by discussing the applications of IoV in different areas, as well as the comparative study of IoV and VANETs, is being done. Intelligent transportation system involves a huge amount of dynamic real-time critical data so its security is a major concern. Different security aspects of IoV are studied in this review which includes security requirements, security challenges, and security attacks. After this, existing security solutions of all attacks are elaborated and discussion section is provided to highlight the drawbacks of security solutions deployed for each attack as well as it emphasizes on the attacks for which no security solutions are available. Based on the extensive study conducted on this, it has been found that existing security solutions use conventional cryptographic techniques that affect the performance of the delay sensitive network i.e. IoV and VANETs. So, a lightweight authentication protocol for RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification devices) has also been proposed to overcome the drawbacks of existing solutions and to provide better performance in terms of low detection time, low CPU and memory consumption to strengthen the existing IoV environment.

Introduction

Today, the transportation systems in many nations are progressively being extended as far as possible as the number of individuals utilizing them continue to increase. In many scenarios, these transportation systems have turned out to be wasteful and expensive to keep up or overhaul. An ongoing report mentions that the number of all vehicles whether commercial or passenger used worldwide is marginally more than one billion [47] and by 2035 it is estimated to achieve around 2 billion [53]. Improving the road safety, traffic monitoring and comfort of passengers are the main goals in the designing of new intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) with the aim to prevent mishaps [57]. Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) have diverse applications for intelligent transportation. VANETs assists the drivers about real-time traffic by transmitting warning and information messages as well as by generating alerts for hazards. Two kinds of communication are possible in VANETs–vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to roadside units (V2R) [63]. The main aim of VANETs is to provide traffic safety and efficiency in terms of reducing time, cost and pollutant emission [68]. But there are still various issues in VANETs which need to be addressed in modern vehicular networks [72]. Issues include: unreliable internet service, incompatibility with personal devices, less commercialization, limited processing capability, singleton network architecture and unavailability of cloud computing services etc.

Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology that connects the digital and physical world [77]. The concept of IoT has led to the emergence of the smarter and intelligent planet by enabling communications between objects and human. In IoT, everyday communication is becoming informative, everyday processing is becoming intelligent and everyday devices are becoming smarter which leads to a vision of “anytime, anywhere, anyway, anything” communications [81]. After universal mobile accessibility and the worldwide web, IoT is assumed as an innovative transformation of our lifetime. Real-time localization, short-range wireless communications, RFID and sensor networks are few of the popular key technologies primarily used in IoT. Numerous research areas are being emanated due to IoT as it has incorporated the vision of smartness in various areas like smart-transport, smart-industry, smart-energy, smart-home and smart-health [84] as pictorially depicted in Fig. 1.

In ITS, IoV (Internet of Vehicles) is considered as one of the most active research fields which has the blend of VANETS and IoT. Due to the incorporation of advanced communication and information technology in IoV, it is beneficial in tackling various traffic and driving issues and thus leads to the safety of passengers and ease the entire driving experience. Inter-vehicular communication, intra vehicular communication, and vehicular mobile Internet are the three main communication components of IoV [86]. IoV is considered as a heterogeneous vehicular network which involves communication of five types: a) Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), b) Vehicle-to-Roadside Units (V2R), c) Vehicle-to-Personal devices (V2P), d) Vehicle-to-Sensors (V2S), and e) Vehicle-to-Infrastructure of cellular networks (V2I) which is also depicted in Fig. 2.

For efficient communication in IoV, different kinds of wireless technologies are used: a) vehicular communications (DSRC/CALM), b) cellular mobile communication (4G/LTE, WiMax and Satellite), and c) short-range static communication (Zigbee, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi).

Fig. 3 shows the classification of wireless communication technologies for IoV applications.

The general structure of IoV is described in Fig. 4.

The architecture of IoV is divided into 4 layers – environment sensing and control layer, application layer, network access, and transport layer and coordinative computing control layer [21].

i) Environment sensing and control layer – For the implementation of IoV services, vehicle's control and traffic environment play a vital role so sensing is performed from both vehicle's and environment's perspective. Vehicles sense and gather information from the surroundings to avoid mishaps. Along with it, this layer also gathers the dynamic information of the environment, humans, and vehicles through sensing technology as well as it relies on methods to implement swarm sensing.

ii) Network access and transport layer – Node management, data-processing, remote monitoring, and data analysis are the main tasks of this layer within IoV. It also takes into consideration network load constraints and heterogeneous network access for all vehicles within the IoV network.

iii) Coordinative computing layer – This layer is concerned about coordination in the IoV environment either by supporting the interaction of cognitive computing capability or swarm intelligent coordinative computing capability. Data processing and resource allocation are also provided by coordinative computing layer.

iv) Application layer – Two types of services are offered by the application layer of IoV i.e. closed services and open services. Real-time traffic service offered by numerous internet service providers falls in the category of open services and should support the business model. Closed services focus on specific applications like control platform and traffic command. This layer also offers open service capabilities to third-party providers.

Fig. 5 describes in detail the architecture of IoV.

  • 1.

    A Detailed Survey on IoV is being done by taking into consideration an in-depth comparative study of VANETs and IoV based on numerous parameters.

  • 2.

    All the possible applications of IoV in different areas are being explored which are mainly categorized into four categories like Safety-related applications, comfort and infotainment, traffic efficiency and management and health-care applications. Sub-categories of each application are also taken into study.

  • 3.

    Security is one of the important factors in vehicular communications. So, security aspects of IoV are being studied in this literature which includes security requirements and security challenges.

  • 4.

    To enhance security, it is important to study the existing possible attacks in IoV. So, different security attacks are also taken into consideration.

  • 5.

    An extensive survey of existing security solutions for each attack is being studied and are also mentioned in a tabular form.

  • 6.

    Discussion section is provided which highlights the flaws of security solutions deployed for each attack and emphasizes on the attacks for which no security solutions are available.

  • 7.

    Numerous research challenges of IoV are also studied in this review.

  • 8.

    Finally, a proposed methodology is given which overcomes the drawbacks of existing conventional cryptographic algorithms. A low-cost lightweight authentication protocol is being proposed for RFID to prevent security attacks in IoV environment and proposed methodology is illustrated in the form of a flowchart.

VANETs have improved the transportation systems by enhancing the road safety and traffic efficiency but there are still various challenges that exist in VANETs which is not desirable in modern transportation systems. VANETs lacks the infotainment features like online video streaming, gaming, etc. which may hamper the driving experience and thus it have commercialization issues [88]. Along with this, other issues exist in VANETs like lack of compatibility support for personal devices i.e. tablets and phones [90], unreliable internet connectivity [99], storage and computing constraints [95], etc. Also, due to the increase in the number of traffic casualties, there is a need to incorporate smartness in vehicles, which give rise to the concept of IoV. IoV improves the existing issues of VANETs and is a better alternative for existing transportation systems.

IoV is a new concept and is not yet fully explored. So, IoV needs to be explored from all the possible aspects before bringing it into actual deployment. Its possible application areas, as well as all the security issues and challenges associated with it, need to be identified. Various researchers across the globe are already working on the security aspects of IoV. So, it is very important to find the status and problems with the existing security solutions. So, in this research article, we have made a sincere attempt to find out these problems.

Section 2 discusses the comparison of VANETs and IoV based on numerous parameters. Section 3 illustrates in detail the various applications of VANETs and IoV. Section 4 discusses the security aspects of IoV which takes into consideration security requirements and security challenges of IoV. Section 5 presents the different security attacks in IoV. Section 6 gives the existing security solutions for each attack. Section 7 is the discussion section where flaws of existing security solutions for each attack are outlined as well as attacks which did not get much attention among researchers are also mentioned. Section 8 discusses the research challenges in IoV. Section 9 gives the proposed methodology for preventing the security attacks in IoV environment. Section 10 is the conclusion section which concludes the whole review.

Section snippets

Comparison of IoV and VANETs

IoV is considered as a superset of VANETs (Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks). IoV is composite of VANETs and IoT, and it has been coined to enhance the VANETs capabilities and to strengthen the ITS. IoV and VANETs technologies appears similar to each other due to their common objective of strengthening the overall roadside driving experience and to reduce the road accidents, but at the same time, there are various parameters which can differentiate the two networks. These are discussed below in detail:

Applications in VANETs and IoV

An immense and tremendous amount of services and applications are being supported by VANETs and IoV and can impart voluminous crucial information to on-road drivers and travelers. Applications of IoV can be divided in following broad categories: a) Safety-related applications, b) Comfort and infotainment, c) Traffic efficiency and management, and d) health-care applications [113]. Each of these application types can be further categorized into numerous applications.

Fig. 6 depicts the

Security aspect of VANETs and IoV

Security is one of the challenging issues in IoV and VANETs because if a vehicle is controlled by a hacker with the ulterior intention [161], it will result in traffic accidents. A detailed survey of security is of utmost importance so various aspects of security will be analyzed in this section like security requirements, security challenges and possible attacks [162].

Security attacks and threats in IoV and VANETs

VANETs and IoV are exposed to various type of attacks and threats [181]. To enhance the security of VANETs it is essential to understand the existing attacks in VANETs. In this section, various security attacks are discussed. These attacks can be categorized as Active and Passive based upon the nature of such attacks. Active attacks are those in which attacker and malicious user actively participate in the attack for extracting the sensitive information from the network. For example, fake

Security solutions for attacks in IoV

In this section solutions to previously described security attacks are elaborated.

i. Security Solutions to Sybil Attack

Security is one of the major concerns in VANETs and Sybil attack violates the safety of passengers by introducing nodes with multiple identities to disseminate the false messages in the network resulting in accidents. Thus there is a need to determine the security solutions for Sybil attack. Authors in [208] have proposed a method named as sybil attack detection with the

Discussions

Sybil attack is one of the prominent attacks in VANETs and IoV. In our research, for Sybil attack, we have referred about 21 reference papers of recent years. Various solutions have been proposed by different authors for preventing sybil attack in a network but there is still a need for further enhancements as proposed solutions have some flaws like: proposed methods are dependent on a number of nodes, few are dependent on RSUs, etc.

Denial of Service (DoS) attack is also assumed as one of the

Research challenges in IoV

Implementation of IoV is still considered as a challenging issue. Few research challenges are discussed in this section.

  • a)

    Network model and service model of human-vehicle – Efficient network model of human-vehicle in IoV is considered as an open issue and it needs to be addressed soon keeping in mind the maximization of resource utilization, stability, and robustness of the network. The building of a cognitive learning model, study of service characteristics during the process of coordination are

Proposed lightweight cryptographic security framework for IoV

VANETs and IoV have revolutionized the transportation systems due to the consolidation of advanced information and communication technology resulting in intelligent transportation systems. Both rely on real-time information so delay cannot be tolerated as well as it needs to be secure because the vehicle can be controlled by hacker resulting in full control of the vehicle in his hands which may lead to hazardous situations. Thus security is one of the important aspects of transportation systems

Conclusion

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has become the key enabling technology to realize future autonomous driving scenarios. IoV is an integrated system that interconnects people within and around vehicles, intelligent systems onboard vehicles, and various cyber-physical systems in urban environments. It has gained huge commercial interest and research value due to the rapid development of computation and communication technologies like Edge Computing, Grid Computing, Parallel Processing, Big Data

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University for providing the necessary support and infrastructure for carrying out this study. Also, I would like to thank Mr. Sparsh Sharma for proofreading this document.

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