Bruno Fernandes

Implementation and analysis of traffic safety protocols based on ETSI Standard

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) standard has defined the Basic Set of Applications (BSA) which is composed of three main application classes road/traffic safety, traffic efficiency, and other value-added applications. Traffic safety applications strongly rely on the exchange of two types of safety messages that have been standardized by ETSI namely Cooperative Awareness Messages (CAMs) and Decentralized Environmental Notification Messages (DENMs). The ETSIs comprehensive and well documented standards present the structures and implementations guidelines of these safety messages yet there is lack of extensive work on the implementation and validation. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive architecture and implementation that has been developed to validate the potentials of CAM and DENM messaging capabilities. This paper evaluates the performance of CAM and DENM facilities through a custom IEEE 802.11p (ITS-G5) based prototype (IT2S) deployed in a field trial. The tests validates the CAM performance by tracking vehicles and various performance indicators such the packet error rate (PER), Received Signal strength (RSSI), connection distance between the OBUs and RSU, number of messages transmitted, GPS coordinates and successful packets received. Similarly, DENMs are validated by events such as traffic information, hazardous location and accidents. These tests motivate towards the unified solution for the implementation of a complete ITS.

Automatic accident detection with multi-modal alert system implementation for ITS

The rapid technological growth is now providing global opportunities to enable intelligent transportation system (ITS) to tackle road accidents which is considered one of the worlds largest public injury prevention problem. For this purpose, eCall is an initiative by European Union (EU) with the purpose to bring rapid assistance to an accident location. This paper1 presents HDy Copilot, an application for automatic accident detection integrated with multimodal alert dissemination, via both eCall and IEEE 802.11p (ITS-G5). The proposed accident detection algorithm receives inputs from the vehicle, via ODB-II, and from the smartphone sensors, namely the accelerometer, the magnetometer and the gyroscope. An Android smartphone is used as human machine interface, so that the driver can configure the application, receive road hazard warnings issued by other vehicles in the vicinity and cancel countdown procedures upon false road vehicle crash detection. The HDy Copilot is developed for Android OS as it provides open source APIs that allow access to its hardware resources. The application is implemented, tested and connected to an IEEE 802.11p based prototype. The generated results show that the application successfully detects collisions, rollovers, performs the eCall along with sending Minimum Set of Data (MSD) and Decentralized Environmental Notification Message (DENM).

Towards Reliable Wireless Vehicular Communications

Real-time dependable communication requires deterministic transmission instants and bounded latency for inter-vehicular communication. Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) has serious drawbacks in what concerns to the timeliness of the communications, since it allows collisions to happen in the channel and it may cause unbounded delays before channel access. This paper proposes an enhanced version of the Vehicular Flexible Time-Triggered (V-FTT) protocol, a deterministic MAC protocol for vehicular communications. Proposed enhancements include novel schemes to protect V-FTT compliant nodes from the interference of non-compliant nodes, which can only transmit during specific slots, the Free Period. These mechanisms were implemented and validated in an ITS G5 station, the IT2S platform.

eCall++: An enhanced emergency call system for improved road safety

This paper presents an enhanced emergency Call (eCall) system that combines the native eCall services with the benefits provided by vehicular communications networks. The proposed solution, named eCall++, consists of a mobile application that automatically detects an accident and disseminates the alert notification, both via eCall and vehicular communications standards (IEEE WAVE / ETSI ITS-G5). In this work, two additional services are introduced: a passenger detection algorithm that informs the emergency services about the number of people inside the car during the crash; and a video streaming mechanism that enables vehicles in the vicinity of the accident to send a live record of the accident scene. These features are developed and implemented on an Android device connected to a custom vehicular communications system (the IT2S platform). The experimentally obtained results validate the proposed system and provide viable evidence to add additional features to the conventional eCall architecture.

Integration of smart parking in distributed ITS architecture

In this paper, a new architecture has been proposed to enable distributed sensing in intelligent transportation system (ITS) and to facilitate the transition of legacy systems by the use of gateways (GW) which provide the existing systems with their native interface while also implementing the new functions for local communication and intelligence. The prompt detection of smart parking events are reported by the pervasive wireless sensor network and coordinated by the deployed gateways, drivers are informed in real-time about the situation available services on their route to destination. This contributes to reduce destination time as well as the fuel consumption of each driver and therefore CO2 emissions. In addition, the provision of real-time information on parking availability will help drivers to park their vehicles in less time, thus relieving traffic congestion, reducing CO2 emissions and improving urban mobility. The smart parking sensors are deployed and results are obtained to validate the proposed architecture.

PASMO: An open living lab for cooperative ITS and smart regions

PASMO is a regional project aiming to bridge the gap between research and practice in the area of urban mobility support. It covers key access roads to the seaside villages of the Aveiro/Ilhavo region, in the center of Portugal, providing vehicular communications, regular WiFi access, and a myriad of useful mobility services (parking, bikes, jams, weather) under the umbrella of a smart region infrastructure dedicated to simplify the involvement of industry in testing and developing new services. The infrastructure is currently being deployed, and the services will be operational by mid 2018.

HDy Copilot: A Mobile Application for Automatic Accident Detection and Multimodal Alert Dissemination

The rapid technological growth is now providing global opportunities to enable intelligent transportation system (ITS) to tackle road traffic accidents which is considered one of the world’s largest public injury prevention problem. For this purpose, eCall is an initiative by EU with the purpose to bring rapid assistance to an accident location presents HDy Copilot, an application for accident detection integrated with multimodal alert dissemination, both via eCall and IEEE 802.11p (ITS-G5). The proposed accident detection algorithm receives inputs from the vehicle, via ODB-II, and from the smartphone sensors, namely the accelerometer, the magnetometer and the gyroscope. Android smartphone is used as human machine interface, so that the driver can configure the application, receive road hazard warnings issued by other vehicles in the vicinity and cancel countdown procedures upon false accident detection. The HDy Copilot is developed for Android OS as it provides open source APIs that allow access to its hardware resources. The application is implemented and tested on IEEE 802.11p based prototype and the generated results show that it successfully detects collisions, rollovers and performs the eCall along with sending Minimum Set of Data (MSD).

Reliable Delivery of Safety Messages in Infrastructure Based Vehicular Networks

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is an emerging paradigm which attracted massive research in the recent past to enhance the level of safety and efficiency of vehicular networks contributing to comfortable and safer roads. ITS applications and services have strict timelines constraints that must be met by the underline communication protocols in order to support deterministic real-time communications. While the existing technologies are evolving and do not support deterministic real-time communications, we used Vehicular Time-Triggered (V-FTT) Protocol which is a deterministic protocol based on IEEE-802.11p/ETSI-ITS-G5. In this paper, we enhanced the reliability of safety messages by exploiting the real time characteristics of V-FTT protocol and the safety zone concept in an infrastructure based vehicular network. The reliable dissemination of safety messages over V-FTT protocol is made possible by the introduction of redundant Road Side Units (RSUs) inside each safety zone. The analytical and prototype based results reveal that vehicles inside the safety zones with higher redundancy have higher packet success rate thus validate our mechanism.

Implementation and Analysis of IEEE and ETSI Security Standards for Vehicular Communications

Over the last years, there has been a considerable development in the field of wireless vehicular communications so as to satisfy the requirements of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS). Standards such as IEEE 802.11p and ETSI ITS-G5 enable the so-called Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). Vehicles can exploit VANETs to exchange information, such as alerts and awareness information, so as to improve drivers’ comfort and traffic efficiency. However, due to the expected popularity of ITS, VANETs could be prone to attacks by malicious sources. To prevent this, security standards, such as IEEE 1609.2 and ETSI ITS’ standards, were developed. In this work, the design and implementation of an API capable of conducting the required cryptographic algorithms and protocols for the transmission of secure messages according to the IEEE 1609.2 and ETSI ITS’ security standards are presented. The implemented security protocols are then integrated into a system emulating a public key infrastructure to evaluate the performance impact on safety-related communications, in particular, the delay associated with the communication’ coding/decoding process.

Cooperative sensing for improved traffic efficiency: The highway field trial

Abstract The existing architecture of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) supporting Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) exhibits a hierarchical nature where the data is flowing from bottom (vehicles, sensors, road side units, etc.) to top (centralized management system) and, once processed, back to the bottom layer (variable message signs, emergency services, etc.). However, this centralized approach limits the inclusion of new devices and exhibits latency and security issues. These issues are tackled by Intelligent Cooperative Sensing for Improved traffic efficiency (ICSI), a European Union funded project which proposes an architecture where the intelligence for sensing and actuation is distributed and exhibits high reliability by incorporating local replication, high scalability by easily accommodating new components and bounded latency by significant shorter paths. In this paper, we present the proposed architecture, the developed road side unit (RSU), on board unit (OBU), and software modules appropriate for the cooperative operations and for achieving the goals envisioned in the ICSI project. The developed prototypes are integrated into an end-to-end demonstrator and used in on-field experiments for the use cases of smart urban traffic management accident recovery on the highways. The generated trial results validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategies, together with the operations of the distributed architecture and provide a set of advanced tools for control, monitoring, simulation and predictions, that achieves a more safe, sustainable and uncongested road.