Secure Location-Aware Authentication and Communication for Intelligent Transportation Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lightweight, location-aware authentication protocol for intelligent transportation systems that uses visual localization and QR codes to verify message authenticity and sender location in real-time.

Contribution

The proposed protocol uniquely combines visual localization with message authentication, eliminating the need for infrastructure and reducing localization costs in ITS.

Findings

Protocol is scalable and infrastructure-free.

Enables real-time verification and localization.

Provides trustworthiness guarantees beyond sensor capabilities.

Abstract

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are expected to effectively create a stand-alone network for secure communication among autonomous agents. In such a dynamic and fast-changing network with high-speed agents, verifying the authenticity and integrity of messages while taking preventive action (e.g., applying brakes) within tens of milliseconds is one of the main challenges. In such a brief moment after receiving a message, the agent not only must verify the integrity and authenticity of the received message but also needs to perform extra computations to localize the sender of the message for taking appropriate action (e.g., an immediate stop warning from a vehicle in front vs. rear). In this paper, we present an inherently location-aware and lightweight authentication protocol by exploiting in situ visual localization (i.e., SLAM). In this protocol, each agent displays its public key using visual authentication beacons (e.g., QR codes). Thus, receiving agents not only can verify and authenticate the messages but also can easily localize the sender by keeping a shortlist of observed visual beacons within their visual localization system with no additional computation cost. Compared to prior work, our location-aware protocol is scalable, does not depend on any infrastructure, removes the high cost of post-message-delivery localization, and provides trustworthiness guarantees for information that are beyond the reach of each agent sensors.