Location Privacy Threats and Protections in 6G Vehicular Networks: A Comprehensive Review

TL;DR

This comprehensive review analyzes localization techniques and privacy-preserving mechanisms in 6G vehicular networks, highlighting gaps in current methods and emphasizing the need for user-server-interface-based solutions to enhance location privacy.

Contribution

The paper classifies and evaluates existing location privacy-preserving mechanisms in vehicular networks, identifying underexplored user-server-interface-based approaches and discussing future challenges.

Findings

User-server-interface-based LPPMs are underrepresented in literature.

Balancing data utility and privacy remains a key challenge.

Emerging threats from future wireless technologies are identified.

Abstract

Location privacy is critical in vehicular networks, where drivers' trajectories and personal information can be exposed, allowing adversaries to launch data and physical attacks that threaten drivers' safety and personal security. This survey reviews comprehensively different localization techniques, including widely used ones like sensing infrastructure-based, optical vision-based, and cellular radio-based localization, and identifies inadequately addressed location privacy concerns. We classify Location Privacy Preserving Mechanisms (LPPMs) into user-side, server-side, and user-server-interface-based, and evaluate their effectiveness. Our analysis shows that the user-server-interface-based LPPMs have received insufficient attention in the literature, despite their paramount importance in vehicular networks. Further, we examine methods for balancing data utility and privacy protection for existing LPPMs in vehicular networks and highlight emerging challenges from future upper-layer location privacy attacks, wireless technologies, and network convergences. By providing insights into the relationship between localization techniques and location privacy, and evaluating the effectiveness of different LPPMs, this survey can help inform the development of future LPPMs in vehicular networks.