Secure & Private VSN Design for Smart Traffic Control Systems

This report discusses the design of Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs) for smart traffic control systems, emphasizing security and privacy. It addresses the increasing issues of traffic congestion and road accidents, highlighting how VSNs can contribute to smart mobility in cities. The study explores theoretical approaches, real-world VSN architectures, and applications for traffic control, including context-aware, reliable, and trustworthy transmission. Key research questions revolve around VSN development for smart traffic control and ensuring security and privacy. The report also identifies challenges such as constant topology changes and potential threats to user data, suggesting approaches like location-based services and historical trajectory publishing. Ultimately, it emphasizes the need for social-trust-based strategies for secure and reliable VSN communications, pointing towards future research directions in integrating social network services and information technology for improved urban living.

Running head: VEHICULAR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Vehicular Social Networks
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Abstract
Social media has become one of the most used tools for communication. Vehicular Social
Networks thus provides the ease of communication and the flexibility of a mobile Internet. The
research proposal would constitute of sections for introduction, a review of the relevant literature
and the methodologies used for the research. The introduction section contains a discussion to
the research background, the aims along with the objective of the research, the problem
statement and the rationale for the research. The literature review contains a review of the
previous work on the same field and the section for research methodology consists of the tools
required for the research.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction......................................................................................................................3
2. Theoretical approaches:...................................................................................................3
3. Real world VSN system:.................................................................................................4
4. Application of VSN for traffic control systems:..............................................................4
5. Research questions:.........................................................................................................5
6. Research problems:..........................................................................................................5
7. Possible approaches:........................................................................................................6
8. Conclusion and Future Works:........................................................................................6
9. References:......................................................................................................................7
10. Appendix:......................................................................................................................9

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Title: Designing VSN for smart traffic control system to secure and provide
privacy
1. Introduction:
The vehicular transportation is an important part of the cities in the current era. The world
has witnessed a rise-in numbers of traffic congestions, road accidents and various other
problems. These are the main barriers towards developing smart cities. Since the assimilation of
social networks and Internet of vehicles, the VSN or (Vehicular Social networks) have promised
to resolve the problems though smart mobility in current cities.
The study aims at the methods to design VSN for smart traffic control system that must
be secured and supply privacy. In this study various challenges and open issues are discussed
and highlighted. The researches focus on the ways to encourage trust among people and socialize
them without any worry or boundary about privacy and security.
2. Theoretical approaches:
Social network is characterized by the communication gap closure it provides to the end-
users located at any place in the world. Similarly, the vehicular social network is termed as the
social network meant for connecting the automobiles (Vegni and Loscri 2015). The mobility
from thead hoc network of the vehicles and the need for humans to socialize directly impacts on
the usefulness of the social network. The technology is decentralized and depends on the
mobility of the technology used. This is a novel approach to the application of social media for
the road for exchanging messages and information with strangers on the road.
Privacy and security are the major concerns when it comes to vehicular social networks
(Salamatianet al. 2015). The information that is shared by the end-users on the network can be

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easily accessed and stolen by any attacker. These systems are generally built to provide
accessibility and usability. However, these devices are connecting to random public network
services to host the social media service and broadcast data. Therefore, the data of the end-users
are susceptible to theft (Ning et al. 2017). Trust is another issue here as the people might not be
confident enough to share their information with the people on the platform.
The current scenario can be understood through several ways. Two of the approaches are
analyzed here. The first one is the traffic modeling. For this T-S segments from the data of bus
trajectory are to be extracted for describing traffic congestions across the cities. As this is done
the real traffic situations across the city is described. Next, the traffic anomaly is detected. The
anomalous TS-segments are to be mined next. It must impact the bus travelling through
calculating LOF of every TS-segment (Flick 2015). Then the city can be partitions into small
regions that help in inner-line detection. Thus the anomalous TS-segments can be mapped in
various lines to small regions. This helps in better understanding of traffic conditions.
3. Real world VSN system:
The real world architecture of VSN has been very much flexible. It has been including
centralized architecture where the centralized server managers have been managing systems that
enables V21 communications. The next one is the decentralized architecture. Here the V2V
communications has been carries through WAVE or DSRC (Li et al. 2014). The last one is the
hybrid architecture. Here users are connected to Internet through cellular network such as 25 or
4G via RSUs.

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4. Application of VSN for traffic control systems:
The first applications are context-aware transmission. As per as a report by Cisco, about
250 million passenger vehicles are able to create over 300 million GB of data through wireless
communications. This huge quantity of data calls for information dissemination mechanisms.
This is because of the irrelevant information is been welcomed by the drivers. The next one is the
reliable transmission (Luan et al. 2015). Here the moving speeds of the vehicles are more than
that of human beings. This results in changes in topology frequently in VSNs. The data
transmission has been accommodating these high dynamic topologies. The last one is
trustworthy transmission. The advantage is to share common interest among the drivers of
vehicles that is brought into VSNs (Saunders et al. 2015). Besides, the privacy problems are also
needed to consider here, that needs trustworthy transmission.
5. Research questions:
The different research questions are as follows.
 How to develop VSN for smart traffic control system?
 How can VSN secure and provide privacy?
6. Research problems:
It is noted that every efforts for network optimization has been nothing without trust.
First of all, regarding trust transmission at VSN, the main challenges has been the constant
change in topology because of various vehicle movements. It helps in limiting the contact time.
Here a third party is needed to maintain trust (Vegni and Loscri 2015). The VSNs has been
utilizing various data such as social connections, mobility patterns, identity, location and others
to provide services. Here the threats of potentiality for users are considered. Similarly, the false

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alarms can rise in emergency situation that is overlooked in this research (Creswell and Creswell
2017). This can mislead users and even result in mishaps at roads.
7. Possible approaches:
The potential threats for the users are needed to be considered. This is because personal
data gets exposed to various criminal acts and malicious attacks. The research can focus on two
approaches.
Approach 1: Using location-based services for reporting traffic conditions under 1 Km across the
user.
Approach 2: This includes the publishing of historical trajectories (Borgatti, Everett and Johnson
2018).
Moreover, different misleading data under utility services has been wasting energy and
time.
8. Conclusion and Future Works:
Till now, few related researches have been conducted in eradicating problems in VSNs.
Thus, different social-trust based strategies can be deployed further regarding secure and reliable
communications for VSNs. The above study has emphasized on the significance of efficiency
and reliable methods of transmissions for various smart cities. Specifically, it has focused on the
detection of traffic anomaly for the VSNs. It is understood that though VSNs are seen as the way
to improve quality of life for the citizens, avenues for this study has not been flat. There have
been many issues that are still ahead. However, it can be said that VSNs will be able to draw
attentions and different research efforts in near future. This would be done through integrating
social network services and information technology as a more compacted application.

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9. References:
Bao, J., Zheng, Y., Wilkie, D. and Mokbel, M., 2015. Recommendations in location-based social
networks: a survey. GeoInformatica, 19(3), pp.525-565.
Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Johnson, J.C., 2018. Analyzing social networks. Sage.
Creswell, J.W. and Creswell, J.D., 2017. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed
methods approaches. Sage publications.
Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research
project. Sage
Li, C., Li, D.Y., Miklau, G. and Suciu, D., 2014. A theory of pricing private data. ACM
Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), 39(4), p.34
Luan, T.H., Lu, R., Shen, X. and Bai, F., 2015. Social on the road: Enabling secure and efficient
social networking on highways. IEEE Wireless Communications, 22(1), pp.44-51.
Ning, Z., Xia, F., Ullah, N., Kong, X. and Hu, X., 2017. Vehicular social networks: Enabling
smart mobility. IEEE Communications Magazine, 55(5), pp.16-55.
Salamatian, S., Zhang, A., du Pin Calmon, F., Bhamidipati, S., Fawaz, N., Kveton, B., Oliveira,
P. and Taft, N., 2015. Managing your private and public data: Bringing down inference attacks
against your privacy. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, 9(7), pp.1240-1255.
Saunders, M.N., Lewis, P., Thornhill, A. and Bristow, A., 2015. Understanding research
philosophy and approaches to theory development.
Scott, J., 2017. Social network analysis. Sage.
Smith, J.A. ed., 2015. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.

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Su, Z., Hui, Y. and Guo, S., 2016. D2D-based content delivery with parked vehicles in vehicular
social networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 23(4), pp.90-95.
Vegni, A.M. and Loscri, V., 2015. A survey on vehicular social networks. IEEE
Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(4), pp.2397-2419.
Wang, G., Zou, Y., Zhou, Z., Wu, K. and Ni, L.M., 2016. We can hear you with wi-fi!.IEEE
Transactions on Mobile Computing, 15(11), pp.2907-2920.
Yang, Q. and Wang, H., 2015. Toward trustworthy vehicular social networks. IEEE
Communications Magazine, 53(8), pp.42-47.
Yang, Q. and Wang, H., 2015. Toward trustworthy vehicular social networks. IEEE
Communications Magazine, 53(8), pp.42-47.

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10. Appendix:
Main activities/ stages Week
1
Week
2
Week
3
Week
4
Week
5
Week
6
Week
7
Topic Selection 
Data collection from secondary sources  
Creating layout 
Literature review   
Formation of the research Plan  
Selection of the Appropriate Research
Techniques
 
Primary data collection  
Analysis & Interpretation of Data
Collection
 
Findings of the Data 
Conclusion of the Study 
Formation of Rough Draft  
Submission of Final Work  
Table 1: Gantt chart
(Source: Created by the author)