Zengpeng Li, Mamoun Alazab, Sahil Garg, M. Shamim Hossain
Insufficient parking space and traffic congestion are important usual suspects in our urban life. Organisation and managing available parking spaces have raised a lot of awareness. Traditional centralized parking approaches are with an insidious single point of failure and unsuitable for large organization because the manager is overburdened with authority and responsibility. The malicious service provider enables to (i) track the precise mobility patterns of citizens. (ii) collect the data to infer privacy-sensitive information, e.g., where the parking requester (i.e., driver) socialize, work, and live; (iii) analyze trajectories to monitor the location of the driver for entertainment (e.g., discovering one-night stands). To design a decentralized smart and practical parking platform without compromising the privacy of the entities is an urgent issue for the smart city. Blockchain (or distributed public ledger technology) is a near-ideal decentralized and distributed solution for centralized parking-space-recommendation systems. However, most of the existing parking recommendation solutions on top of blockchain ignore to protect the privacy of drivers during parking spot detection and matching phases while cannot maintain the property of anonymity of the drivers. In this paper, an efficient and privacy-preserving parking-space recommendation service platform, named as PriParkRec, along with the proof-of-concept solution to protect the requester's privacy in PriParkRec while maintaining most of the benefits of current parking-space sharing service, i.e., accountability, (anonymous) authentication, (anonymous) payment, and reputation ratings. Indeed, PriParkRec service relies on well-known privacy-enhancing cryptographic building blocks (e.g., oblivious PRF, private set intersection, anonymous credentials, anonymous payment, and smart-contract, etc), these building blocks are carefully integrated together to achieve privacy and security goals to revolutionize the existing car-parking service system coming with the private blockchain and industrial internet of things (IIoTs) technologies.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Smart Parking Systems Research
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Yan Zhang, Lei Zhang, Burong Kang, Yue Ma · 5 authors
With the development of vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) technology, more and more smart parking systems in VANETs are presented. However, existing solutions suffer from the challenges of dishonest parking lots that may claim there are more empty spots than they actually have, malicious occupation of parking spots and multi-reservation attack, etc. To address these challenges, we propose a secure and reliable smart parking protocol based on blockchain and linkable group signatures. For the security of our scheme, it not only realizes traditional authentication, privacy preservation and message confidentiality requirements but also prevents multi-reservation attack and the dishonest parking lots that claim more empty spots than they actually have.
A blockchain, which is well known as one of the distributed ledgers, has attracted in many research fields. In this paper, we discuss the effectiveness and limitation of a blockchain in distributed optimization. In distributed optimization, the original problem is decomposed, and the local problems are solved by multiple agents. In this paper, ADMM (Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers) is utilized as one of the powerful methods in distributed optimization. In ADMM, an aggregator is basically required for collecting the computation result in each agent. Using blockchains, the function of an aggregator can be contained in a distributed ledger, and an aggregator may not be required. As a result, tampering from attackers can be prevented. As an application, we consider energy management systems (EMSs). By numerical experiments, the effectiveness and limitation of blockchain-based distributed optimization are clarified.
For long, different e-voting systems have been provided with the goal of increasing security and minimizing cost. Blockchain is a major breakthrough in the technological industry that provide immense secured platform. With the launch of Ethereum, a decentralized platform which runs decentralized applications (DApps) on it, a secured voting system now seems possible. Many organizations have now shifted their focus on voting through blockchain platforms. There’s a very high chance that a normal voting method won’t lead to a clear majority. There can be many ways to deal with this issue which includes another voting process to take place which can be quite expensive in terms of time and resources. In our paper, we introduce the vote-trading concept where the votes can be redistributed to other candidates in case if there is no clear majority and also this ‘ majority’ factor can be set by the organization according to their requirement. We discuss the design for the blockchain based preferential e-voting system using the Solidity programming language where instead of one vote per candidate, we provide the concept of giving preference to the candidates.
Mirza Jabbar Aziz Baig, M. Tariq Iqbal, Mohsin Jamil, Jahangir Khan
The growing energy demand and rising number of prosumers of the low-cost renewable energy, require state-of-the-art energy management solution without involvement of a thirdparty. Internet of things (IoT) and blockchain based Peer to Peer(P2P) energy trading model is the one, where peers can participatein the electricity market and trade energy independently. This pilotstage research gives all the basic understanding with technicaldetails of an IoT and blockchain based peer to peer (P2P) energytrading platform. It fulfills the needs of prosumers and give economic benefits to the participants. The proposed Peer to Peer(P2P) energy trading platform provides all the key features like energy transfer, metering, money transfer to facilitate energytrading. The proposed system uses only open source software.
In a block channel IoT system, sensitive details can be leaked by means of the proof of work or address check, as data or application Validation data is applied on the blockchain. In this, the zero-knowledge evidence is applied to a smart metering system to show how to improve the anonymity of the blockchain for privacy safety without disclosing information as a public key. Within this article, a blockchain has been implemented to deter security risks such as data counterfeiting by utilizing intelligent meters. Zero-Knowledge Proof, an anonymity blockchain technology, has been implemented through block inquiry to prevent threats to security like personal information infringement. It was suggested that intelligent contracts would be used to avoid falsification of intelligent meter data and abuse of personal details.
Recently, smart-parking systems were proposed employing blockchain technology to ensure security, transparency, and availability of services. Building on a principle of complete system decentralization, we present the concept and implementation of a privacy-preserving solution for renting parking spaces. The anonymity of users is ensured by a combination of zero knowledge proofs, commitment schemes, differential privacy and fungible tokens. We compare implementations on three different public blockchain networks: Ethereum, EOS, and Tron. We analyze security and privacy of the proposed system and evaluate how ensuring anonymity affects user experience. We conduct user-oriented test to explore the performance (transaction time and cost) of the system in realistic situations. Results indicate that the proposed concept is feasible while employing current blockchain technology. EOS and Tron implementations currently provide performance that matches existing centralized systems. The performance of Ethereum implementation would probably not meet user expectations.
Driverless parking, an influential application of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) model, is one of the clear early benefits for autonomous vehicles, given often narrow spaces and multiple potential hazards (such as pedestrians stepping out from in between other vehicles). In recent years, real momentum has been building up for designing automated parking models for vehicles. However, in such an autonomous parking design, location privacy and identity privacy issues are always overlapping due to the improper sharing of data. Most existing studies barely investigate and poorly address such privacy issues. Motivated by this, we develop (and evaluate) an experience-driven, secure and privacy-aware framework of parking reservations for automated cars. Our idea of using differential privacy with zero-knowledge proof provides both security and privacy guarantees to users. Furthermore, the performance of the developed model is enhanced by exploiting reinforcement learning approach such that the utility of the system and the parking reservation rate can be maximized. Extensive evaluation demonstrates the superiority of the proposed model.
In most cities, the availability of parking is a major concern. The misuse of parking spots as drivers park for longer than permitted periods cause more delays, inconvenience to others, and even parking tickets. Moreover, the payment systems at many locations are still not electronic and rely on hard currency. The search for a parking space also contributes to congestion, pollution, and other safety issues. This paper introduces an end-to-end system that enables automatic car payments in a safe, private, secure, and efficient manner using Blockchain technology. The proposed solution utilizes Ethereum to prototype a solution which can facilitate the parking payments. In addition, Android auto and application modules that automate the payment process have also been developed. Moreover, a validation technique for enhancing the quality and correctness of the proposed solution, namely Model-Based Testing Techniques, has been discussed. The latter consists of deriving test suites from an adopted formal model, performing them, and assessing the correctness. The used formal model may combine both functional and load aspects. A list of techniques for improving the formal testing approach was identified. Besides, the authors explained how to manage dynamic adaptations of the system under test and how to use isolation strategies for avoiding interference between testing and business behaviors. Finally, an optimization phase for testers placement inspired by fog computing is proposed as well.
As a representative example for the construction of a smart city, a smart parking system has been developed in past research and implemented through IoT and cloud technologies. However, the initial installation cost of IoT sensor devices is preventing the spread of this technology, and thus as an alternative, a crowdsensing-based system, operating through data from publicly owned mobile devices, has been proposed. In this paper, we propose a multi-blockchain structure (i.e., constructed with public chain and private chain) in a crowdsensing-based smart parking system. In this structure, many sensing data contributors participate through the opened public blockchain, to transparently provide sensing information and to claim corresponding rewards. The private blockchain provides an environment for sharing the collected information among service providers in real time and for providing parking information to users. The bridge node performs an information relay role between the two blockchains. Performance analysis and security analysis on the implemented proposed system show the feasibility of our proposed system.
The convenience of using private cars has an accompanying parking challenge which becomes a significant issue in congested metropolitans and downtown areas. The explosive increase in the number of vehicles has substantially raised the issue of finding a suitable parking spot, which is both time and resource consuming. At the same time, many private parking spots remain idle, while their owners are not present at home. To promote the utility of private parking spots and mitigate parking issues, smart parking apps can be used. Unfortunately, some of them suffer from privacy issues that affect participation willingness, while others work in a centralized environment where the availability of service is not guaranteed in the presence of malicious users. In this work, we propose Blockchain-based Smart parking with Fairness, reliability and Privacy protection, called BSFP. Specifically, group signatures, bloom filters, and vector-based encryption are leveraged to protect the user's privacy. The decentralized nature of blockchain is utilized to achieve reliability in smart parking, and the smart contract is used to realize fairness. Comprehensive security analysis and experimental results based on the real-world dataset show that BSFP achieves fairness, reliability and privacy protection with high efficiency.
The fast penetration of Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) has become the primary growth engine of the automotive industry in recent years. Urban vehicular network consisting of ICVs is evolving towards a distributed intelligent platform for pervasive sensing, connecting and computing in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and smart cities. In this paper, we propose that parked vehicles (PVs) could be exploited for environment perception and model inference. We describe the system architecture and its typical application scenarios of distributed environment perception for city roads, parking lots, as well as for commercial and residential buildings. PVs are motivated to assist in deep learning model inference for the captured image data in such applications. Regarding the diversity of PVs in deep learning capability, a differential incentive mechanism is elaborately designed based on contract theory to emulate PVsparticipation. The experiment on the dataset of German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark is conducted to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
Although vehicular global positioning system (GPS) has been widely applied in many traffic scenarios, it is far from achieving lane-level positioning due to its low accuracy. Existing cooperative positioning (CP) methods have improved vehicular positioning accuracy to varying degrees, which still have challenges in further improving the system's robustness and security. In this article, we propose a novel framework of blockchain-enabled Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with CP for improving vehicular GPS positioning accuracy, system robustness, and security. First, a self-positioning correction scheme for the intelligent vehicles is proposed to improve their positioning accuracy, which uses the multitraffic signs as benchmarks to correct the vehicular position (given by GPS) by deep neural network (DNN) algorithm. We further design a multi-intelligent vehicle positioning error sharing model to reduce GPS positioning error of common vehicles (CoVs) in the same segment or area. In addition, to realize information sharing between vehicles and ensure system security, the connections among intelligent vehicles, CoVs, and roadside units are built by proposing a blockchain-enabled architecture that includes IoV subsystem and blockchain subsystem, where the corresponding mechanism of the information choosing, information sharing, and penalty is designed. Extensive simulation results show the accuracy, robustness, and security of our proposal in terms of vehicular positioning, information transferring, and sharing.
In this existing era of growing urbanization and globalization, Markets are booming with smart cars and smart vehicles. The emerging shortage in vehicles parking space has created a major problem for drivers. Long search for secure parking space results in traffic jam, air pollution and waste of time. Hence it is important to park vehicle at proper parking lots. However smart parking systems enable drivers to automate and monetize them to real-time parking slot. For using these types of secure and smart parking system drivers has to disclose their sensitive and personal information. Also, existing schemes are centralized, which makes them at risk by single point of failure and restricted access this can cause problems and privacy breaches by service providers. In this paper we have compared two major mechanisms for providing security to smart parking system. Blockchain technology is distributed computing paradigm and decentralized architecture with complete trust and authentication. Whereas, biometrics system is used for authenticating user by their behavioral and physical information obtained for the purposes of both identification and access control. Comparison study of these two mechanisms assist in understanding layers of communication level and providing security to different degrees of security arrangements.
Smart Parking Systems Research
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Nikolay Buldakov, Timur Khalilev, Salvatore Distefano, Manuel Mazzara
This paper discusses an open source solution to smart-parking in highly urbanized areas. Interviews have been conducted with domain experts, user stories defined and a system architecture has been proposed with a case study. Our solution allows independent owners of parking space to be integrated into one unified system, that facilitates the parking situation in a smart city. The utilization of such a system raises the issues of trust and transparency among several actors of the parking process. In order to tackle those, we propose a smart contract-based solution, that brings in trust by encapsulating sensitive relations and processes into transparent and distributed smart contracts.
Ferran Herraiz Faixó, Francisco-Javier Arroyo-Cañada, María Pilar López-Jurado, Ana M. Lauroba-Pérez
Currently, cities are facing great challenges such as the population growing, citizen wellbeing, externalities management or environmental deterioration. The search for solutions are making significant inroads into the incorporation of ICT in them and subsequent large-scale digitalization such as programmable economy (PE) applications, offering the possibility to develop new approaches over these issues, in particular which related to sustainability management. Operating under a fuzzy numbers methodology and FIS (Fuzzy Inference System), the present exploratory work shows a new approach to city urban congestion management by deploying PE applications, which include some disruptive inputs such as the Internet of value, blockchain/DLT (distributed ledger technology), smarts contracts, digital assets and the monetization, all of this combined with the human motivation.
Lingling Wang, Xiaodong Lin, Eugene V. Zima, Chunguang Ma
Private parking spot sharing can help relieve the parking problem due to insufficient public parking facilities in big cities. Meanwhile, users who share parking spots can also benefit, either by getting a free parking spot or by obtaining a parking fee payment. However, when users are sharing their private parking spots, their privacy is inevitable to be disclosed. This could put these parking spots owners into some unnecessary inconveniences, such as identity theft. Existing private parking spot sharing schemes either do not consider privacy issues. Or, when privacy is taken into account, they assume the existence of a trusted third party. To address these issues, we propose a privacy-enhanced private parking spot sharing scheme without trusted third parties. Specifically, we use market design method to share parking spots. We achieve enhanced privacy with decentralized anonymous credentials and confidential anonymous payment with a variant Monero. Extensive analysis confirms the security and privacy protection of the proposed scheme. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed scheme has moderate computational costs and communication overhead.