Falcon Optimization Algorithm-Based Energy Efficient Communication Protocol for Cluster-Based Vehicular Networks

Rapid development in Information Technology(IT)has allowed several novel application regions like large outdoor vehicular networks for Vehicle-to-Vehicle(V2V)transmission.Vehicular networks give a safe and more effective driving experience by presenting time-sensitive and location-aware data.The communication occurs directly between V2V and Base Station(BS)units such as the Road Side Unit(RSU),named as a Vehicle to Infrastructure(V2I).However,the frequent topology alterations in VANETs generate several problems with data transmission as the vehicle velocity differs with time.Therefore,the scheme of an effectual routing protocol for reliable and stable communications is significant.Current research demonstrates that clustering is an intelligent method for effectual routing in a mobile environment.Therefore,this article presents a Falcon Optimization Algorithm-based Energy Efficient Communication Protocol for Cluster-based Routing(FOA-EECPCR)technique in VANETS.The FOA-EECPCR technique intends to group the vehicles and determine the shortest route in the VANET.To accomplish this,the FOA-EECPCR technique initially clusters the vehicles using FOA with fitness functions comprising energy,distance,and trust level.For the routing process,the Sparrow Search Algorithm(SSA)is derived with a fitness function that encompasses two variables,namely,energy and distance.A series of experiments have been conducted to exhibit the enhanced performance of the FOA-EECPCR method.The experimental outcomes demonstrate the enhanced performance of the FOA-EECPCR approach over other current methods.

Joint offloading strategy based on quantum particle swarm optimization for MEC-enabled vehicular networks

With the development of the mobile communication technology,a wide variety of envisioned intelligent transportation systems have emerged and put forward more stringent requirements for vehicular communications.Most of computation-intensive and power-hungry applications result in a large amount of energy consumption and computation costs,which bring great challenges to the on-board system.It is necessary to exploit traffic offloading and scheduling in vehicular networks to ensure the Quality of Experience(QoE).In this paper,a joint offloading strategy based on quantum particle swarm optimization for the Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)enabled vehicular networks is presented.To minimize the delay cost and energy consumption,a task execution optimization model is formulated to assign the task to the available service nodes,which includes the service vehicles and the nearby Road Side Units(RSUs).For the task offloading process via Vehicle to Vehicle(V2V)communication,a vehicle selection algorithm is introduced to obtain an optimal offloading decision sequence.Next,an improved quantum particle swarm optimization algorithm for joint offloading is proposed to optimize the task delay and energy consumption.To maintain the diversity of the population,the crossover operator is introduced to exchange information among individuals.Besides,the crossover probability is defined to improve the search ability and convergence speed of the algorithm.Meanwhile,an adaptive shrinkage expansion factor is designed to improve the local search accuracy in the later iterations.Simulation results show that the proposed joint offloading strategy can effectively reduce the system overhead and the task completion delay under different system parameters.

A Blockchain-Assisted Distributed Edge Intelligence for Privacy-Preserving Vehicular Networks

The enormous volume of heterogeneous data fromvarious smart device-based applications has growingly increased a deeply interlaced cyber-physical system.In order to deliver smart cloud services that require low latency with strong computational processing capabilities,the Edge Intelligence System(EIS)idea is now being employed,which takes advantage of Artificial Intelligence(AI)and Edge Computing Technology(ECT).Thus,EIS presents a potential approach to enforcing future Intelligent Transportation Systems(ITS),particularly within a context of a Vehicular Network(VNets).However,the current EIS framework meets some issues and is conceivably vulnerable tomultiple adversarial attacks because the central aggregator server handles the entire systemorchestration.Hence,this paper introduces the concept of distributed edge intelligence,combining the advantages of Federated Learning(FL),Differential Privacy(DP),and blockchain to address the issues raised earlier.By performing decentralized data management and storing transactions in immutable distributed ledger networks,the blockchain-assisted FL method improves user privacy and boosts traffic prediction accuracy.Additionally,DP is utilized in defending the user’s private data from various threats and is given the authority to bolster the confidentiality of data-sharing transactions.Our model has been deployed in two strategies:First,DP-based FL to strengthen user privacy by masking the intermediate data during model uploading.Second,blockchain-based FL to effectively construct secure and decentralized traffic management in vehicular networks.The simulation results demonstrated that our framework yields several benefits for VNets privacy protection by forming a distributed EIS with privacy budget(ε)of 4.03,1.18,and 0.522,achieving model accuracy of 95.8%,93.78%,and 89.31%,respectively.

Information Freshness-Oriented Trajectory Planning and Resource Allocation for UAV-Assisted Vehicular Networks

In this paper,multi-UAV trajectory planning and resource allocation are jointly investigated to improve the information freshness for vehicular networks,where the vehicles collect time-critical traffic information by on-board sensors and upload to the UAVs through their allocated spectrum resource.We adopt the expected sum age of information(ESAoI)to measure the network-wide information freshness.ESAoI is jointly affected by both the UAVs trajectory and the resource allocation,which are coupled with each other and make the analysis of ESAoI challenging.To tackle this challenge,we introduce a joint trajectory planning and resource allocation procedure,where the UAVs firstly fly to their destinations and then hover to allocate resource blocks(RBs)during a time-slot.Based on this procedure,we formulate a trajectory planning and resource allocation problem for ESAoI minimization.To solve the mixed integer nonlinear programming(MINLP)problem with hybrid decision variables,we propose a TD3 trajectory planning and Round-robin resource allocation(TTPRRA).Specifically,we exploit the exploration and learning ability of the twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm(TD3)for UAVs trajectory planning,and utilize Round Robin rule for the optimal resource allocation.With TTP-RRA,the UAVs obtain their flight velocities by sensing the locations and the age of information(AoI)of the vehicles,then allocate the RBs to the vehicles in a descending order of AoI until the remaining RBs are not sufficient to support another successful uploading.Simulation results demonstrate that TTP-RRA outperforms the baseline approaches in terms of ESAoI and average AoI(AAoI).

Hierarchical Federated Learning: Architecture, Challenges, and Its Implementation in Vehicular Networks

Federated learning(FL)is a distributed machine learning(ML)framework where several clients cooperatively train an ML model by exchanging the model parameters without directly sharing their local data.In FL,the limited number of participants for model aggregation and communication latency are two major bottlenecks.Hierarchical federated learning(HFL),with a cloud-edge-client hierarchy,can leverage the large coverage of cloud servers and the low transmission latency of edge servers.There are growing research interests in implementing FL in vehicular networks due to the requirements of timely ML training for intelligent vehicles.However,the limited number of participants in vehicular networks and vehicle mobility degrade the performance of FL training.In this context,HFL,which stands out for lower latency,wider coverage and more participants,is promising in vehicular networks.In this paper,we begin with the background and motivation of HFL and the feasibility of implementing HFL in vehicular networks.Then,the architecture of HFL is illustrated.Next,we clarify new issues in HFL and review several existing solutions.Furthermore,we introduce some typical use cases in vehicular networks as well as our initial efforts on implementing HFL in vehicular networks.Finally,we conclude with future research directions.

Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection in Vehicular Networks (VANETs)

As Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) become more sophisticated, the importance of integrating data protection and cybersecurity is increasingly evident. This paper offers a comprehensive investigation into the challenges and solutions associated with the privacy implications within VANETs, rooted in an intricate landscape of cross-jurisdictional data protection regulations. Our examination underscores the unique nature of VANETs, which, unlike other ad-hoc networks, demand heightened security and privacy considerations due to their exposure to sensitive data such as vehicle identifiers, routes, and more. Through a rigorous exploration of pseudonymization schemes, with a notable emphasis on the Density-based Location Privacy (DLP) method, we elucidate the potential to mitigate and sometimes sidestep the heavy compliance burdens associated with data protection laws. Furthermore, this paper illuminates the cybersecurity vulnerabilities inherent to VANETs, proposing robust countermeasures, including secure data transmission protocols. In synthesizing our findings, we advocate for the proactive adoption of protective mechanisms to facilitate the broader acceptance of VANET technology while concurrently addressing regulatory and cybersecurity hurdles.

Mobility-Aware Partial Computation Offloading in Vehicular Networks: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Scheme

Encouraged by next-generation networks and autonomous vehicle systems,vehicular networks must employ advanced technologies to guarantee personal safety,reduce traffic accidents and ease traffic jams.By leveraging the computing ability at the network edge,multi-access edge computing(MEC)is a promising technique to tackle such challenges.Compared to traditional full offloading,partial offloading offers more flexibility in the perspective of application as well as deployment of such systems.Hence,in this paper,we investigate the application of partial computing offloading in-vehicle networks.In particular,by analyzing the structure of many emerging applications,e.g.,AR and online games,we convert the application structure into a sequential multi-component model.Focusing on shortening the application execution delay,we extend the optimization problem from the single-vehicle computing offloading(SVCOP)scenario to the multi-vehicle computing offloading(MVCOP)by taking multiple constraints into account.A deep reinforcement learning(DRL)based algorithm is proposed as a solution to this problem.Various performance evaluation results have shown that the proposed algorithm achieves superior performance as compared to existing offloading mechanisms in deducing application execution delay.

Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based URLLC-Aware Task Offloading in Collaborative Vehicular Networks

Collaborative vehicular networks is a key enabler to meet the stringent ultra-reliable and lowlatency communications(URLLC)requirements.A user vehicle(UV)dynamically optimizes task offloading by exploiting its collaborations with edge servers and vehicular fog servers(VFSs).However,the optimization of task offloading in highly dynamic collaborative vehicular networks faces several challenges such as URLLC guaranteeing,incomplete information,and dimensionality curse.In this paper,we first characterize URLLC in terms of queuing delay bound violation and high-order statistics of excess backlogs.Then,a Deep Reinforcement lEarning-based URLLCAware task offloading algorithM named DREAM is proposed to maximize the throughput of the UVs while satisfying the URLLC constraints in a besteffort way.Compared with existing task offloading algorithms,DREAM achieves superior performance in throughput,queuing delay,and URLLC.

Multi-agent reinforcement learning for edge information sharing in vehicular networks

To guarantee the heterogeneous delay requirements of the diverse vehicular services,it is necessary to design a full cooperative policy for both Vehicle to Infrastructure(V2I)and Vehicle to Vehicle(V2V)links.This paper investigates the reduction of the delay in edge information sharing for V2V links while satisfying the delay requirements of the V2I links.Specifically,a mean delay minimization problem and a maximum individual delay minimization problem are formulated to improve the global network performance and ensure the fairness of a single user,respectively.A multi-agent reinforcement learning framework is designed to solve these two problems,where a new reward function is proposed to evaluate the utilities of the two optimization objectives in a unified framework.Thereafter,a proximal policy optimization approach is proposed to enable each V2V user to learn its policy using the shared global network reward.The effectiveness of the proposed approach is finally validated by comparing the obtained results with those of the other baseline approaches through extensive simulation experiments.

Enabling QoE-aware Mobile Cloud Video Recording over Roadside Vehicular Networks

Most of previous video recording devices in mobile vehicles commonly store captured video contents locally. With the rapid development of 4G/Wi Fi networks, there emerges a new trend to equip video recording devices with wireless interfaces to enable video uploading to the cloud for video playback in a later time point. In this paper, we propose a QoE-aware mobile cloud video recording scheme in the roadside vehicular networks, which can adaptively select the proper wireless interface and video bitrate for video uploading to the cloud. To maximize the total utility, we need to design a control strategy to carefully balance the transmission cost and the achieved QoE for users. To this purpose, we investigate the tradeoff between cost incurred by uploading through cellular networks and the achieved QoE of users. We apply the optimization framework to solve the formulated problem and design an online scheduling algorithm. We also conduct extensive trace-driven simulations and our results show that our algorithm achieves a good balance between the transmission cost and user QoE.

A Systematic Approach for Cyber Security in Vehicular Networks

Vehicular Networks (VANET) are the largest real-life paradigm of ad hoc networks which aim to ensure road safety and enhance drivers’ comfort. In VANET, the vehicles communicate or collaborate with each other and with adjacent infrastructure by exchanging significant messages, such as road accident warnings, steep-curve ahead warnings or traffic jam warnings. However, this communication and other assets involved are subject to major threats and provide numerous opportunities for attackers to launch several attacks and compromise security and privacy of vehicular users. This paper reviews the cyber security in VANET and proposes an asset-based approach for VANET security. Firstly, it identifies relevant assets in VANET. Secondly, it provides a detailed taxonomy of vulnerabilities and threats on these assets, and, lastly, it classifies the possible attacks in VANET and critically evaluates them.

A Trusted and Privacy-Preserving Carpooling Matching Scheme in Vehicular Networks

With the rapid development of intelligent transportation, carpooling with the help of Vehicular Networks plays an important role in improving transportation efficiency and solving environmental problems. However, attackers usually launch attacks and cause privacy leakage of carpooling users. In addition, the trust issue between unfamiliar vehicles and passengers reduces the efficiency of carpooling. To address these issues, this paper introduced a trusted and privacy-preserving carpooling matching scheme in Vehicular Networks (TPCM). TPCM scheme introduced travel preferences during carpooling matching, according to the passengers’ individual travel preferences needs, which adopted the privacy set intersection technology based on the Bloom filter to match the passengers with the vehicles to achieve the purpose of protecting privacy and meeting the individual needs of passengers simultaneously. TPCM scheme adopted a multi-faceted trust management model, which calculated the trust value of different travel preferences of vehicle based on passengers’ carpooling feedback to evaluate the vehicle’s trustworthiness from multi-faceted when carpooling matching. Moreover, a series of experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed scheme. The results show that the proposed scheme has high accuracy, lower computational and communication costs when compared with the existing carpooling schemes.

Trajectory-Based Data Forwarding Schemes for Vehicular Networks

This paper explains trajectory-based data forwarding schemes for multihop data delivery in vehicular networks where the trajectory is the GPS navigation path for driving in a road network. Nowadays, GPS-based navigation is popular with drivers either for efficient driv- ing in unfamiliar road networks or for a better route, even in familiar road networks with heavy traffic. In this paper, we describe how to take advantage of vehicle trajectories in order to design data-forwarding schemes for information exchange in vehicular networks. The design of data-forwarding schemes takes into account not only the macro-scoped mobility of vehicular traffic statistics in road net- works, but also the micro-scoped mobility of individual vehicle trajectories. This paper addresses the importance of vehicle trajectory in the design of multihop vehicle-to-infrastructure, infrastructure-to-vehicle, and vehicle-to-vehicle data forwarding schemes. First, we explain the modeling of packet delivery delay and vehicle travel delay in both a road segment and an end-to-end path in a road net- work. Second, we describe a state-of-the-art data forwarding scheme using vehicular traffic statistics for the estimation of the end-to- end delivery delay as a forwarding metric. Last, we describe two data forwarding schemes based on both vehicle trajectory and vehicu- lar traffic statistics in a privacy-preserving manner.

Unveiling the Challenges in Improving Data Availability in Vehicular Networks with Network Codingin

Retrieving data from mobile source vehicles is a crucial routine operation for a wide spectrum of vehicular network applications, in- cluding road surface monitoring and sharing. Network coding has been widely exploited and is an effective technique for diffusing in- formation over a network. The use of network coding to improve data availability in vehicular networks is explored in this paper. With random linear network codes, simple replication is avoided, and instead, a node forwards a coded block that is a random combination of all data received by the node. We use a network-coding-based approach to improve data availability in vehicular networks. To deter- mine the feasibility of this approach, we conducted an empirical study with extensive simulations based on two real vehicular GPS traces, both of which contain records from thousands of vehicles over more than a year. We observed that, despite significant improve- ment in data availability, there is a serious issue with linear correlation between the received codes. This reduces the data-retrieval success rate. By analyzing the real vehicular traces, we discovered that there is a strong community structure within a real vehicular network. We verify that such a structure contributes to the issue of linear dependence. Then, we point out opportunities to improve the network-coding-based approach by developing community-aware code-distribution techniques.

V2X Offloading and Resource Allocation in SDN-Assisted MEC-Based Vehicular Networks

As an important application scenario of 5G, the vehicular network has a huge amount of computing data, which brings challenges to the scarce network resources. Mobile edge computing(MEC) sinks cloud services to the edge of network, which reduces the delay jitter caused by remote cloud computing. Software-defined networking(SDN) is an emerging network paradigm with the features of logic centralized control and programmability. In this paper, we construct an SDN-assisted MEC network architecture for the vehicular network. By introducing SDN controller, the efficiency and flexibility of vehicular network are improved, and the network state can be perceived from the global perspective. To further reduce the system overhead, the problem of vehicle to everything(V2X) offloading and resource allocation is proposed, where the optimal offloading decision, transmission power control, subchannels assignment, and computing resource allocation scheme are given. The optimization problem is transformed into three stages because of the heterogeneity of the offloaded tasks and the NP-hard property of the problem. Firstly, the analytic hierarchy process is used to select initial offloading node, then stateless Q-learning is adopted to allocate transmission power, subchannels and computing resources. In addition, the offloading decision is modeled as a potential game, and the Nash equilibrium is proved by the potential function construction. Finally, the numerical results show that the proposed mechanism can effectively reduce the system overhead and achieve better results compared with others’ algorithms.

Performance Analysis for Large Intelligent Surface Assisted Vehicular Networks

Large intelligent surface(LIS)is considered as a new solution to enhance the performance of wireless networks[1].LIS comprises low-cost passive elements which can be well controlled.In this paper,a LIS is invoked in the vehicular networks.We analyze the system performance under Weibull fading.We derive a novel exact analytical expression for outage probability in closed form.Based on the analytical result,we discuss three special scenarios including high SNR case,low SNR case,as well as weak interference case.The corresponding approximations for three cases are provided,respectively.In order to gain more insights,we obtain the diversity order of outage probability and it is proved that the outage probability at high SNR depends on the interference,threshold and fading parameters which leads to 0 diversity order.Furthermore,we investigate the ergodic achievable rate of LIS-assisted vehicular networks and present the closed-form tight bounds.Similar to the outage performance,three special cases are studied and the asymptotic expressions are provided in simple forms.A rate ceiling is shown for high SNRs due to the existence of interference which results 0 high SNR slope.Finally,we give the energy efficiency of LIS-assisted vehicular network.Numerical results are presented to verify the accuracy of our analysis.It is evident that the performance of LIS-assisted vehicular networks with optimal phase shift scheme exceeds that of traditional vehicular networks and random phase Received:Aug.6,2020 Revised:Nov.17,2020 Editor:Caijun Zhong shift scheme significantly.

Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks for Social Networks： Requirements and Challenges

Heterogeneous vehicular networks （HetVNETs） are regarded as a promising technique for meeting various requirements of intelli- gent transportation system （ITS） services. With the rapid development of mobile Internet in the past decade, social networks （SNs） have become an indispensable part of human life. Based on this indivisible relationship between vehicles and users, social charac- teristics and human behaviors can significantly affect vehicular network performance. Hence, we firstly present two architectures for SNs by introducing social characteristics into the HetVNETs. Then, several user cases are also given in this paper, in which service requirements are analyzed simultaneously. At last, we briefly discuss potential challenges raised by the HetVNETs for SNs.

Exploiting blockchain for dependable services in zero-trust vehicular networks

The sixth-generation(6G)wireless communication system is envisioned be cable of providing highly dependable services by integrating with native reliable and trustworthy functionalities.Zero-trust vehicular networks is one of the typical scenarios for 6G dependable services.Under the technical framework of vehicle-and-roadside collaboration,more and more on-board devices and roadside infrastructures will communicate for information exchange.The reliability and security of the vehicle-and-roadside collaboration will directly affect the transportation safety.Considering a zero-trust vehicular environment,to prevent malicious vehicles from uploading false or invalid information,we propose a malicious vehicle identity disclosure approach based on the Shamir secret sharing scheme.Meanwhile,a two-layer consortium blockchain architecture and smart contracts are designed to protect the identity and privacy of benign vehicles as well as the security of their private data.After that,in order to improve the efficiency of vehicle identity disclosure,we present an inspection policy based on zero-sum game theory and a roadside unit incentive mechanism jointly using contract theory and subjective logic model.We verify the performance of the entire zero-trust solution through extensive simulation experiments.On the premise of protecting the vehicle privacy,our solution is demonstrated to significantly improve the reliability and security of 6G vehicular networks.

Design of Evolutionary Algorithm Based Energy Efficient Clustering Approach for Vehicular Adhoc Networks

In a vehicular ad hoc network(VANET),a massive quantity of data needs to be transmitted on a large scale in shorter time durations.At the same time,vehicles exhibit high velocity,leading to more vehicle disconnections.Both of these characteristics result in unreliable data communication in VANET.A vehicle clustering algorithm clusters the vehicles in groups employed in VANET to enhance network scalability and connection reliability.Clustering is considered one of the possible solutions for attaining effectual interaction in VANETs.But one such difficulty was reducing the cluster number under increasing transmitting nodes.This article introduces an Evolutionary Hide Objects Game Optimization based Distance Aware Clustering(EHOGO-DAC)Scheme for VANET.The major intention of the EHOGO-DAC technique is to portion the VANET into distinct sets of clusters by grouping vehicles.In addition,the DHOGO-EAC technique is mainly based on the HOGO algorithm,which is stimulated by old games,and the searching agent tries to identify hidden objects in a given space.The DHOGO-EAC technique derives a fitness function for the clustering process,including the total number of clusters and Euclidean distance.The experimental assessment of the DHOGO-EAC technique was carried out under distinct aspects.The comparison outcome stated the enhanced outcomes of the DHOGO-EAC technique compared to recent approaches.

Adaptive Resource Allocation Algorithm for 5G Vehicular Cloud Communication

The current resource allocation in 5G vehicular networks for mobile cloud communication faces several challenges,such as low user utilization,unbalanced resource allocation,and extended adaptive allocation time.We propose an adaptive allocation algorithm for mobile cloud communication resources in 5G vehicular networks to address these issues.This study analyzes the components of the 5G vehicular network architecture to determine the performance of different components.It is ascertained that the communication modes in 5G vehicular networks for mobile cloud communication include in-band and out-of-band modes.Furthermore,this study analyzes the single-hop and multi-hop modes in mobile cloud communication and calculates the resource transmission rate and bandwidth in different communication modes.The study also determines the scenario of one-way and two-way vehicle lane cloud communication network connectivity,calculates the probability of vehicle network connectivity under different mobile cloud communication radii,and determines the amount of cloud communication resources required by vehicles in different lane scenarios.Based on the communication status of users in 5G vehicular networks,this study calculates the bandwidth and transmission rate of the allocated channels using Shannon’s formula.It determines the adaptive allocation of cloud communication resources,introduces an objective function to obtain the optimal solution after allocation,and completes the adaptive allocation process.The experimental results demonstrate that,with the application of the proposed method,the maximum utilization of user communication resources reaches approximately 99%.The balance coefficient curve approaches 1,and the allocation time remains under 2 s.This indicates that the proposed method has higher adaptive allocation efficiency.