在現今車載傳輸安全資訊中最重要的兩個評估效能參數 -- Latency和reliability，要兼顧到這兩個的效能在現今不可靠的無線連接中是很困難的工作。這主要的挑戰是來自於在網路連接層的廣播，使用了不可靠的傳輸，例如:當某點接受到一個訊息時並不會傳輸一個反饋的信息給來源端通知它已接受到此信息。在現今有許多的方法是利用多於的點去增加接受的可靠性，但這將會增加網路頻寬的負載。 在我們的論文中我們提出了一個新的傳輸安全資訊的方法，使用少數relay去完成快速的安全資訊傳輸，並且在相同時間內去保持高效能傳輸的可靠性。在這我們介紹了兩個relay的型式同時地去減少end-to-end 傳輸延遲時間和增加傳輸範圍可靠性。地理樹狀演算法是由樹演算法而來的，它可以減少不必要的relay和傳輸資訊碰撞的發生，而802.11p則是用在優先權比較高的點擁有比較小的重新傳輸延遲時間。 / Vehicular environments impose a set of new requirements on today’s wireless communication systems. Latency and reliability are very important means to disseminate safety information like time-sensitive emergency messages (EMs) in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Providing low-latency, high-coverage and scalable multi-hop EM broadcast is a hard task in VANET with unreliable links. The major challenge comes from the fact that the link-layer broadcast uses unreliable transmissions, i.e., no positive feedback to acknowledge the reception of the message. Many existing works have used redundant relay nodes to enhance the reliability of broadcast packet reception. However they often involve more relays than it is necessary, which increases the network load and undermines the scalability of the protocol. Moreover, large latency is often incurred due to coarse protocol design. In this thesis, we propose a new EM broadcast scheme that uses a small number of relays to achieve fast multi-hop EM propagation, at the same time to maintain a high level of transmission reliability. Two types of relays are introduced to reduce latency and to enhance reliability simultaneously, so that low-latency, the desired reliability level and small overhead can be achieved at the same time. The inverse tree algorithm (ITA) is based on tree algorithm, the mechanism to select single relay distributive, which features an effective redundant relay suppressing mechanism and very small rebroadcast delay for high priority nodes. Simulation study shows that ITA and multi-channel achieves close to 100% reliability, while using a small number of relays with very low broadcast latency under a wide range of road traffic conditions.

One of the most challenging issues facing vehicular networks lies in the design of an efficient MAC protocol due to mobile nature of nodes, delay constraints for safety applications and interference. In this thesis, I propose an efficient Multichannel QoS Cognitive MAC (MQOG). MQOG assesses the quality of channel prior to transmission employing dynamic channel allocation and negotiation algorithms to achieve significant increase in channel reliability, throughput and delay constraints while simultaneously addressing Quality of Service. The uniqueness of MQOG lies in making use of the free unlicensed bands. To consider fair effective sharing of resources I propose a Mobility Based Dynamic Transmit Opportunity (MoByToP) while modifying the 802.11e TXOP (Transmit Opportunity). The proposed protocols were implemented in OMNET++ 4.1, and extensive experiments demonstrated a faster and more efficient reception of safety messages compared to existing VANet MAC Protocols. Finally, improvements in delay, packet delivery ratios and throughput were noticed.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) include a wide range of applications that aim to use state-of-the-art communication and information technologies to enhance and control the flow of traffic. The ability to communicate with cars while travelling on the road is crucial to the success of these systems and thus requires careful studying. This research aims to study the feasibility of deploying wireless communication networks that are capable of collecting data from cars as well as providing them with information about the current traffic situation. We present a platform that integrates a microscopic traffic simulation, Paramics, and a communication network simulator, Omnet++. The integration of both simulators is a key solution to several research problems both on the communications side and on the transportation side. The combined simulator will allow designing and testing ITS Applications, which rely on communication between vehicles, before they are implemented on the streets.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) include a wide range of applications that aim to use state-of-the-art communication and information technologies to enhance and control the flow of traffic. The ability to communicate with cars while travelling on the road is crucial to the success of these systems and thus requires careful studying. This research aims to study the feasibility of deploying wireless communication networks that are capable of collecting data from cars as well as providing them with information about the current traffic situation. We present a platform that integrates a microscopic traffic simulation, Paramics, and a communication network simulator, Omnet++. The integration of both simulators is a key solution to several research problems both on the communications side and on the transportation side. The combined simulator will allow designing and testing ITS Applications, which rely on communication between vehicles, before they are implemented on the streets.

One of the most challenging issues facing vehicular networks lies in the design of an efficient MAC protocol due to mobile nature of nodes, delay constraints for safety applications and interference. In this thesis, I propose an efficient Multichannel QoS Cognitive MAC (MQOG). MQOG assesses the quality of channel prior to transmission employing dynamic channel allocation and negotiation algorithms to achieve significant increase in channel reliability, throughput and delay constraints while simultaneously addressing Quality of Service. The uniqueness of MQOG lies in making use of the free unlicensed bands. To consider fair effective sharing of resources I propose a Mobility Based Dynamic Transmit Opportunity (MoByToP) while modifying the 802.11e TXOP (Transmit Opportunity). The proposed protocols were implemented in OMNET++ 4.1, and extensive experiments demonstrated a faster and more efficient reception of safety messages compared to existing VANet MAC Protocols. Finally, improvements in delay, packet delivery ratios and throughput were noticed.

Vehicular communication has been an emerging topic among current wireless research. The vehicular communication can be classified to Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) and Road-to-Vehicle Communication (RVC). IVC and RVC support applications mainly on two aspects: safety applications aiming to reduce dangers on the road, and data applications aiming to provide information and entertainment to people on traveling. Vehicles nearby form Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) without any fixed infrastructures. Due to the characteristics of vehicular networks such as quickly changing and unstable network topology, IVC has special requirements to the network protocols. Several MAC protocols have been appeared or improved based on previous work for IVC. But these protocols are designed either for QoS guaranteed data service or for reliable message broadcast. There is not a protocol including both application requirements and inexpensive to implement as well. MAC protocol for vehicular communication hasn’t been finalized. In this thesis, an overlay token ring protocol (OTRP) is proposed which can work on MAC layer with broadcast function and taking into the IVC features into consideration. In OTRP, vehicles are grouped to overlapped rings with a token passed in each ring as the sole right for transmission. The ring is dynamically updated in a distributed manner based on smart algorithm at each node. OTRP provides bounded delay by assigning maximum token holding time for each node. It also reduces collisions by decreasing the number of contention nodes by times of ring size. Fair and high throughput is obtained as well. Furthermore, it provides reliable and prompt broadcast of emergency messages by pre-emptively transmitting while applying the token as an acknowledgement. The time nodes reliably receive the message is within limit. Theoretical analysis is provided and simulation results are given to evaluate the performance of OTRP under saturated traffic conditions both in safety and data applications.

Road safety has been drawing increasing attention in the public, and has been subject to extensive efforts from both industry and academia in mitigating the impact of traffic accidents. Recent advances in wireless technology promise new approaches to facilitating road safety and traffic management, where each vehicle (or referred to as On-board unit (OBU)) is allowed to communicate with each other as well as with Roadside units (RSUs), which are located in some critical sections of the road, such as a traffic light, an intersection, and a stop sign. With the OBUs and RSUs, a self-organized network, called Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET), can thus be formed. Unfortunately, VANETs have faced various security threats and privacy concerns, which would jeopardize the public safety and become the main barrier to the acceptance of such a new technology. Hence, addressing security and privacy issues is a prerequisite for a market-ready VANET. Although many studies have recently addressed a significant amount of efforts in solving the related problems, few of the studies has taken the scalability issues into consideration. When the traffic density is getting large, a vehicle may become unable to verify the authenticity of the messages sent by its neighbors in a timely manner, which may result in message loss so that public safety may be at risk. Communication overhead is another issue that has not been well addressed in previously reported studies. Many efforts have been made in recent years in achieving efficient broadcast source authentication and data integrity by using fast symmetric cryptography. However, the dynamic nature of VANETs makes it very challenging in the applicability of these symmetric cryptography-based protocols. In this research, we propose a novel Secure and Efficient RSU-aided Privacy Preservation Protocol, called SERP^3, in order to achieve efficient secure and privacy-preserving Inter-Vehicle Communications (IVCs). With the commitments of one-way key chains distributed to vehicles by RSUs, a vehicle can effectively authenticate any received message from vehicles nearby even in the presence of frequent change of its neighborship. Compared with previously reported public key infrastructure (PKI)-based packet authentication protocols for security and privacy, the proposed protocol not only retains the security and privacy preservation properties, but also has less packet loss ratio and lower communication overhead, especially when the road traffic is heavy. Therefore, the protocol solves the scalability and communication overhead issues, while maintaining acceptable packet latency. However, RSU may not exist in some situations, for example, in the early stage deployment phase of VANET, where unfortunately, SERP^3 is not suitable. Thus, we propose a complementary Efficient and Cooperative Message Validation Protocol, called ECMVP, where each vehicle probabilistically validates a certain percentage of its received messages based on its own computing capacity and then reports any invalid messages detected by it. Since the ultimate goal of designing VANET is to develop vehicle safety/non-safety related applications to improve road safety and facilitate traffic management, two vehicle applications are further proposed in the research to exploit the advantages of vehicular communications. First, a novel vehicle safety application for achieving a secure road traffic control system in VANETs is developed. The proposed application helps circumvent vehicles safely and securely through the areas in any abnormal situation, such as a car crash scene, while ensuring the security and privacy of the drivers from various threats. It not only enhances traveler safety but also minimizes capacity restrictions due to any unusual situation. Second, the dissertation investigates a novel mobile payment system for highway toll collection by way of vehicular communications, which addresses all the issues in the currently existing toll collection technologies.

Road crashes, occurring at a high annual rate for many years, demand improvements in transportation systems to provide a high level of on-road safety. Implanting smart sensors, communication capabilities, memory storage and information processing units in vehicles are important components of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). ITS should enable the communication between vehicles and allow cooperative driving and early warnings of sudden breaks and accidents ahead. The prompt availability of the emergency information will provide the driver a time to react in order to avoid possible accidents ahead. Hence, information delivery delay is an importance quality-of-service (QoS) metric in such applications. In this thesis, we focus on modeling the delay for emergency messaging in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). VANETs consist of nodes moving with very high speeds, resulting in frequent topological changes. As a result, many existing models and packet forwarding schemes designed for general purpose mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) cannot be directly applied to VANETs. In our system model, we consider mobility and traffic density of vehicles. We focus on studying the effect of the traffic flow density on the delay of emergency message dissemination. Hence, traffic flow theories developed by civil engineers form the base of our modeling. The common way of emergency message dissemination in VANETs is broadcasting. To overcome the broadcasting storm problem and improve scalability of such large networks, we adopt a node cluster based broadcasting mechanism. This research provides a realistic mathematical model for the broadcasting delay, which accounts for the randomness in user mobility and matches the highly dynamic nature of VANETs. An investigation on the minimum cluster size that achieves acceptable message delivery latency is provided. It is shown that network control and performance parameters are dependent on the traffic density. Experimental measurement data are used to demonstrate the accuracy of the mathematical modeling.

Numerous local incidents occur on road networks daily many of which may lead to congestion and safety hazards. If vehicles can be provided with information about such incidents or traffic conditions in advance, the quality of driving in terms of time, distance, and safety can be improved significantly. Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have recently emerged as an effective tool for improving road safety through the propagation of warning messages among the vehicles in the network about potential obstacles on the road ahead. This research has presented an effective warning data dissemination scheme which deploys relay strategy and concept of Region of Interest (RoI). A warning data message is characterized as spatio-temporal, implying that both the location and the time of an incident must be considered. Factors such as the type of warning message, the layout of the road network, the traffic density and the capacity of alternative roads are influential in determining the RoI in which the warning message needs to be propagated. In the developed scheme, the type of warning message is taken into account for the determination of the RoI so that the more severe the incident, the wider the RoI. In the selection of the relay point, the border relay area in which the relay point is placed, is adapted to the traffic density so that the higher the traffic density , the narrower the relay area. Traffic statistics are used to calculate the RoI, which is then enclosed in the warning message so that the message is not retransmitted beyond the RoI. Also, the responsibility for retransmitting the message is assigned to the relay node. The data is then disseminated effectively so that vehicles in areas unrelated to the incident are not informed. The primary objective of this research is to provide better understanding of the dissemination of warning data in the context of a vehicular network with the ultimate goal of increasing the possibility of using VANETs for safety applications.

Vehicular communication has been an emerging topic among current wireless research. The vehicular communication can be classified to Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) and Road-to-Vehicle Communication (RVC). IVC and RVC support applications mainly on two aspects: safety applications aiming to reduce dangers on the road, and data applications aiming to provide information and entertainment to people on traveling. Vehicles nearby form Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) without any fixed infrastructures. Due to the characteristics of vehicular networks such as quickly changing and unstable network topology, IVC has special requirements to the network protocols. Several MAC protocols have been appeared or improved based on previous work for IVC. But these protocols are designed either for QoS guaranteed data service or for reliable message broadcast. There is not a protocol including both application requirements and inexpensive to implement as well. MAC protocol for vehicular communication hasn’t been finalized. In this thesis, an overlay token ring protocol (OTRP) is proposed which can work on MAC layer with broadcast function and taking into the IVC features into consideration. In OTRP, vehicles are grouped to overlapped rings with a token passed in each ring as the sole right for transmission. The ring is dynamically updated in a distributed manner based on smart algorithm at each node. OTRP provides bounded delay by assigning maximum token holding time for each node. It also reduces collisions by decreasing the number of contention nodes by times of ring size. Fair and high throughput is obtained as well. Furthermore, it provides reliable and prompt broadcast of emergency messages by pre-emptively transmitting while applying the token as an acknowledgement. The time nodes reliably receive the message is within limit. Theoretical analysis is provided and simulation results are given to evaluate the performance of OTRP under saturated traffic conditions both in safety and data applications.