Secured GPS based traffic monitoring system in pervasive environment

Intelligent traffic systems are pervasive computing applications for developing efficient transportation network in urban areas using GPS probe devices. These systems eliminate traffic congestion, cut back on fuel consumption and reduce travel time. They help the users to choose optimized route to their destinations by providing traffic information dynamically. Any data leakage in the transmission may lead to tracing of individual vehicles resulting in breach of individual privacy causing security and financial loss to them. Forging the data from GPS probe messages during transmission may also lead to utter chaos of road traffic predictions resulting in wrong signals for the users and disturbs entire road traffic system itself. Therefore data privacy is a key issue in such environments. Secured GPS based Traffic monitoring system is proposed in this paper to handle the above issues. This system captures RMC format probe data and transmits securely to probe land center by means of a communication service provider. The probe land center analyses all the probe messages received and determines traffic congestion at various locations and advises the traffic users. Various issues related to the security of the probe data systems are examined and a light weight symmetric algorithm is proposed to encrypt probe data for ensuring data privacy efficiently.