Enhancing Mobility Applications Through Bluetooth Communications

Doctoral thesis (2017)

In the world of short and medium-range wireless technologies, Bluetooth has recently come to the forefront of innovation. Within the next five years its market presence, especially in its Low Energy ... [more ▼]

In the world of short and medium-range wireless technologies, Bluetooth has recently come to the forefront of innovation. Within the next five years its market presence, especially in its Low Energy variation, is expected to nearly double across all market segments. The technology is quickly and steadily gaining importance for a wide range of applications with a specific focus on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The growing availability and variety of such devices constitute an untapped potential that we plan on exploiting. Our focus in this thesis is to understand Bluetooth’s capabilities and explore its potential in mobile contexts. One specific field where this technology remains unexplored is Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). Because of the need to implement and moderate vehicular communications, the topic of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) is now trending more than ever. In this thesis we propose two ways we can benefit from Bluetooth in a mobile environment. Firstly, we consider the technology as a communication medium to investigate how di↵erent mobilities a↵ect the link performance between two devices. To do this, we define a set of communication experiments, in our case between two vehicles, to analyse how Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a↵ected by varying speed, distance and traffic conditions. We find that the maximum communication range between two devices can go beyond 100m and that a robust connection, capable of handling sudden signal losses or interference, can be achieved up to a distance of 50m. The experiments were conducted using a proof-of-concept mobile application for o↵-the-shelf smartphones that can be used to transmit data over multiple hops in various Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) scenarios. Secondly, we consider Bluetooth discovery capabilities as an information medium by using a connectionless approach to analyse di↵erent mobility frameworks. As there is an increasing need for vehicles and objects to become aware of their context, we implement Bluetooth as a sensing system to provide contextual information about its surroundings. Our challenge is to find out to what extent we can exploit the Bluetooth discovery and beaconing scheme for this purpose. We collect and analyse a dataset of Bluetooth Classic and BLE discoveries and evaluate their respective characteristics and ability to provide context-aware information from a vehicular perspective. By examining data recorded about encountered devices, such as quantity, quality of signal and device class information, we infer distinctive Bluetooth behaviours related to context and application. For this purpose, we propose a set a features to train a classification model to recognize di↵erent driving environments (i.e. road classes). Investigating the performance of our classifier, we were able to predict up to three classes (highway, city, extra-urban) by using only Bluetooth discovery data and no geographical information. This outcome gives promising results targeted at low energy and privacy-friendly applications and can open up a wide range of research directions. In conclusion, in this thesis we present two ways of applying Bluetooth to mobile contexts for deploying novel human mobility applications. [less ▲]

Characterizing User Mobility Using Mobile Sensing Systems

in International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (2017), 13(8),

Recent technological advances and the ever-greater developments in sensing and computing continue to provide new ways of understanding our daily mobility. Smart devices such as smartphones or smartwatches ... [more ▼]

Recent technological advances and the ever-greater developments in sensing and computing continue to provide new ways of understanding our daily mobility. Smart devices such as smartphones or smartwatches can, for instance, provide an enhanced user experience based on different sets of built-in sensors that follow every user action and identify its environment. Monitoring solutions such as these, which are becoming more and more common, allows us to assess human behavior and movement at different levels. In this article, extended from previous work, we focus on the concept of human mobility and explore how we can exploit a dataset collected opportunistically from multiple participants. In particular, we study how the different sensor groups present in most commercial smart devices can be used to deliver mobility information and patterns. In addition to traditional motion sensors that are obviously important in this field, we are also exploring data from physiological and environmental sensors, including new ways of displaying, understanding, and analyzing data. Furthermore, we detail the need to use methods that respect the privacy of users and investigate the possibilities offered by network traces, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication technologies. We finally offer a mobility assistant that can represent different user characteristics anonymously, based on a combination of Wi-Fi, activity data, and graph theory. [less ▲]

A Car Hacking Experiment: When Connectivity meets Vulnerability

in Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2015 IEEE (2015, December)

Interconnected vehicles are a growing commodity providing remote access to on-board systems for monitoring and controlling the state of the vehicle. Such features are built to facilitate and strengthen ... [more ▼]

Interconnected vehicles are a growing commodity providing remote access to on-board systems for monitoring and controlling the state of the vehicle. Such features are built to facilitate and strengthen the owner’s knowledge about its car but at the same time they impact its safety and security. Vehicles are not ready to be fully connected as various attacks are currently possible against their control systems. In this paper, we analyse possible attack scenarios on a recently released all-electric car and investigate their impact on real life driving scenarios. We leverage our findings to change the behaviour of safety critical components of the vehicle in order to achieve autonomous driving using an Open Vehicle Monitoring System. Furthermore, to demonstrate the potential of our setup, we developed a novel mobile application able to control such vehicle systems remotely through the Internet. We challenge the current state-of-the-art technology in today’s vehicles and provide a vulnerability analysis on modern embedded systems. [less ▲]

Bluetooth Low Energy Robustness Analysis for V2V Communications

in Ulmer Informatik-Berichte (2015, March)

Bluetooth Low Energy for Inter-Vehicular Communications

in 2014 IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC) (2014, December)

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is quickly and steadily gaining importance for a wide range of applications. In this paper we investigate the potential of BLE in a vehicular context. By means of experiments ... [more ▼]

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is quickly and steadily gaining importance for a wide range of applications. In this paper we investigate the potential of BLE in a vehicular context. By means of experiments, we first evaluate the characteristics of the wireless channel, then we define a set of driving scenarios to analyze how BLE is affected by varying speed, distance and traffic conditions. We that found the maximum communication range between two devices can go beyond 100 meters and that a robust connection can be achieved up to a distance of 50 meters even for varying traffic and driving conditions. Next, we present a proof-of-concept mobile application for off-the-shelf smartphones that can be used to transmit data over multiple hops. Finally we discuss the advantages and limitations of BLE for Inter-Vehicular Communications (IVC) and propose potential applications. [less ▲]