Gaurang Bansal | Publications

2023

Achieving Secure and Reliable UAV Authentication: A Shamir’s Secret Sharing Based Approach Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering 2023 Abstract
Recent times have shown a rapid development in wireless communication-based technologies, especially in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based applications. However, UAV-based applications have not achieved its full potential due to security vulnerabilities that it suffers. The communication between the drones and the base station is susceptible to intrusion. Many authentication protocols like Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) based protocols have been proposed to mitigate this issue that ensures reliable, secure, and fast drone authentication. However, the major drawback in these papers is that they require noise-resistant and theoretically ideal PUF. This assumption limits the use-case of UAV based authentication mechanism. Thus, we propose a novel authentication technique using Shamir’s secret sharing, which is resistant to noisy PUFs. The correctness and perfectness achieved by the proposed protocol are shown using Shannon’s information communication theory. Moreover, Subsequent analysis shows that our proposed scheme improves the performance of authentication of UAVs.
PUF Based Fault Tolerant Authentication Protocol for Vehicle to Smart Grid Communications Bansal, Gaurang, Tyagi, Abhishek, and Chamola, Vinay IEEE Internet of Things Journal 2023
An Optimal Pricing Based Spectrum Allocation Model in Broadband Market Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Jain, Piyush, and Guizani, Mohsen IEEE Internet of Things Journal 2023
Epidemic Safeguard: Multi-Tier IoT Contact Tracing for Global Health Defense Bansal, Gaurang, Baser, Manit, and Chamola, Vinay IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine 2023
Prose to Pixels: Generative AI’s Impact on Consumer Electronics Imaging Bansal, Gaurang, Nawal, Aditya, Chamola, Vinay, and Herencsar, Norbert IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics 2023
Beyond Reality: The Pivotal Role of Generative AI in the Metaverse Chamola, Vinay, Bansal, Gaurang, Kumar, Tridib, Hassija, Vikas, Reddy, Naga Siva Sai, Wang, Jiacheng, Zeadally, Sherali, Hussain, Amir, Yu, Fei Richard, Guizani, Mohsen, and Niyato, Dusit IEEE Internet of Things Magazine 2023 Abstract PDF
Imagine stepping into a virtual world that’s as rich, dynamic, and interactive as our physical one. This is the promise of the Metaverse, and it’s being brought to life by the transformative power of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). This article offers a comprehensive exploration of how generative AI technologies are shaping the Metaverse, transforming it into a dynamic, immersive, and interactive virtual world. We delve into the applications of text generation models like ChatGPT and GPT-3, which are enhancing conversational interfaces with AI-generated characters. We explore the role of image generation models such as DALL·E and MidJourney in creating visually stunning and diverse content. We also examine the potential of 3D model generation technologies like Point-E and Lumirithmic in creating realistic virtual objects that enrich the Metaverse experience. But the journey doesn’t stop there. We also address the challenges and ethical considerations of implementing these technologies in the Metaverse, offering insights into the balance between user control and AI automation. This article is not just a study, but a guide to the future of the Metaverse, offering readers a roadmap to harnessing the power of generative AI in creating immersive virtual worlds.
Healthcare in Metaverse: A Survey on Current Metaverse Applications in Healthcare Bansal, Gaurang, Rajagopal, Karthik, Chamola, Vinay, Xiong, Zehui, and Niyato, Dusit IEEE Access 2023 Abstract PDF
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed several limitations of existing healthcare systems. Thus, there is a surge in healthcare innovation and new business models using computer-mediated virtual environments to provide an alternative healthcare system. Today, digital transformation is not limited to virtual communication alone but encompasses digitalizing the network of social connections in the healthcare industry using metaverse technology. The metaverse is a universal and immersive virtual world facilitated by virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). This paper presents the first effort to offer a comprehensive survey that examines the latest metaverse developments in the healthcare industry, which covers seven domains: telemedicine, clinical care, education, mental health, physical fitness, veterinary, and pharmaceuticals. We review metaverse applications and deeply discuss technical issues and available solutions in each domain that can help develop a self-sustaining, persistent, and future-proof solution for medical healthcare systems. Finally, we highlight the challenges that must be tackled before fully embracing the metaverse for the healthcare industry.
Peer2Peer Mutual Authentication-Attestation Protocol in UAV Swarms Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, and Sikdar, Biplab IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering 2023 Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have a diverse range of social, economic, and military uses. However, since UAVs communicate through wireless technology, they are susceptible to security attacks. Establishing trust among UAVs is one of the most critical security elements for mitigating these risks in UAV networks. However, due to UAVs’ limited resources, implementing conventional trust-building methods in UAV networks becomes difficult. Additionally, as the number of UAVs grows, this problem becomes more serious. To overcome this problem, we propose a lightweight authentication cum attestation system for UAV swarms. The protocol is based on using a formal Mao Boyd logic method, we show that the proposed protocol is feasible, scalable, and secure. Comparative studies demonstrate that the suggested protocol outperforms the current state-of-the-art.
Cracking the Dark Web: Attacks in Tor Network Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Jolfaei, Alireza, and Mumtaz, Shahid IEEE Internet of Things Magazine 2023 Abstract PDF
Tor or "The Onion Router" is one of the most popular, secure, and widely used anonymous routing systems. It is the backbone behind the emergence of the dark web. As a second-generation onion routing system, Tor’s users are protected from any censorship and assures complete anonymity. Tor is based on a worldwide network of relays operated by volunteers around the globe. Tor remains one of the most popular and secure tools against network surveillance, traffic analysis, and information censorship due to its strong employment of encryption, authentication, and routing protocols. With the growing computational capabilities of adversaries, the question remains how long Tor would be able to sustain adversarial attacks and guarantee anonymity. In this paper, we present the foundation of the Tor network, it’s working, the possible attacks against Tor, and the network’s defense strategies. Also, we present a case study on a proposed deep learning framework that employs bandwidth performance to identify the server’s location in the Tor network. This paper underlines the current status and future ahead with the use of Tor’s network.
Transforming Conversations with AI - A Comprehensive Study of ChatGPT Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Guizani, Mohsen, and Niyato, Dusit Cognitive Computation 2023 Abstract
Conversational AI has undergone significant advancements, particularly through the evolution of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) series and the emergence of ChatGPT. These transformer-based models have revolutionized the field by effectively capturing contextual information and long-range dependencies. ChatGPT exhibits enhanced control and responsiveness, demonstrating improved language understanding and the ability to generate accurate and informative responses. It excels in maintaining context and engaging in multi-turn dialogues, leading to more interactive and meaningful conversations. Its flexible system integration and scalability make it suitable for a wide range of applications, including customer service, education, content generation, healthcare, gaming, research, and exploration. Thus this paper provides a comprehensive exploration of ChatGPT, focusing on its architecture, training methodology, applications, and future prospects in conversational AI. This paper also explores ChatGPT’s competitors, including Amazon Codewhisperer1, Google Bard (LaMDA), Microsoft Bing AI, DeepMind Sparrow, and Character AI. Comparative analysis based on inference capabilities and future potential highlights ChatGPT’s advantages in the conversational AI landscape. Understanding the evolution and impact of ChatGPT is essential for researchers and developers pushing the boundaries of AI. It opens up new possibilities for seamless and meaningful interactions between humans and machines. By unraveling the intricacies of ChatGPT’s architecture, applications, and competitors, this paper provides valuable insights into the transformative potential of conversational AI in various domains.

2022

SHOTS: Scalable Secure Hardware Based Authentication-Attestation Protocol Using Optimal Trajectory in UAV Swarms Bansal, Gaurang, Naren, Naren, Chamola, Vinay, and Sikdar, Biplab IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 2022 Abstract PDF
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have enabled a broad spectrum of applications serving social, commercial, and military purposes. But, since UAVs use wireless communication technologies, they are highly vulnerable to security threats. Establishing trust with the base station is the most fundamental security aspect in UAV networks to mitigate these threats. However, due to UAV’s constrained resources, traditional trust establishment schemes in UAV networks become increasingly challenging. This issue escalates as the number of UAVs increases. To address this issue, we propose an authentication cum attestation protocol for UAV Swarms using an optimal communication trajectory, which can establish the required trust in a lightweight manner. Furthermore, our protocol uses Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and thus guarantees physical security as well. We demonstrate that the proposed protocol is feasible, scalable, and secure using a formal Mao Boyd logic approach. Comparative analyses show that the proposed protocol outperforms the state-of-the-art.
Scalable Topologies for Time-Optimal Authentication of UAV Swarms Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Sikdar, Biplab, and Ansari, Nirwan IEEE Network Magazine 2022 Abstract PDF
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) swarm-based applications require a large collection of UAVs deployed in a region to work cohesively. It is imperative to secure UAV-BS (base station) communications to operate such a large number of unattended UAVs in hostile environments. Thus, there is a need to address the security vulnerabilities in the communication exchanges. Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) based UAV authentication has recently emerged as a potential solution to overcome adversarial attacks like man-in-middle attacks, physical cloning, and replay attacks, etc. PUF based authentication provides lightweight validation, reduces the communication and computational overhead for the device. The performance of PUF based authentication protocols is heavily influenced by the choice of proper network topology. In this article, we provide comparative performance analysis for three PUF based protocols that employ different network topologies. The performance analysis is done based on parameters like the time for topology generation, the number of bottleneck connections, and the traffic load in the network.
Beyond Traditional Message Authentication Codes: Future Solutions for Efficient Authentication of Message Streams in IoT Networks Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab IEEE Internet of Things Magazine 2022 Abstract PDF
One of the significant challenges of secure communication in resource-constrained environments is the overhead of integrity protection. The tags of traditional Message Authentication Code (MAC) schemes (e.g., HMAC) occupy most of the total payload. This led to the rise of innovative MAC solutions such as CuMACs, Mini-MACs, and ProMACs. These techniques employ state chaining and tag truncation for improved performance and enhanced security levels. These techniques have been relatively unpopular, and these face some security or performance issues to be deployed in real-world scenarios. In this work, we describe how these different schemes have evolved and the limitations of these approaches. Finally, we propose a new MAC approach that reduces communication overhead without compromising security.
Fault Resilient Authentication Architecture for Drone Networks Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab In IEEE ICC Workshop 2022 Abstract PDF Slides Video
Wireless communication technology, particularly in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications, has advanced rapidly recently. However, owing to security flaws, UAV-based applications have not reached their full potential. Interception of drone-based station communication is possible. Many authentication mechanisms, including Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) based protocols, have been developed to address this problem. However, prior studies require noise-resistant and theoretically perfect PUF. This assumption restricts the usage of UAV-based authentication. This assumption limits the use-cases for UAV-based authentication systems. So we propose a novel distributed authentication approach based on Shamir’s secret sharing that is resistant to noisy PUFs.
Secure and Trusted Attestation Protocol for UAV Fleets Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab In IEEE INFOCOM Workshop 2022 Abstract PDF Slides Video
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are capable of a wide variety of social, economic, and military applications. Due to the fact that UAVs communicate through wireless technology, they are vulnerable to security assaults. Establishing trust between the UAV and the base station is a vital component of reducing these hazards in UAV networks. Due to the restricted resources available to UAVs, adopting typical trust-building procedures in UAV networks becomes challenging. Additionally, as the number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increases, this issue gets more critical. To address this issue, we offer a lightweight attestation mechanism for unmanned aerial vehicle swarms. Comparative analyses reveal that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art already available.

2021

Next Generation Stock Exchange: Recurrent Neural Learning Model for Distributed Ledger Transactions Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Kaddoum, Georges, Piran, Md. Jalil, and Alrashoud, Mubarak Computer Networks 2021 Abstract PDF
A distributed stock exchange system encompasses multiple network hosts that participate in the sharing and exchange of resources. In such exchanges, the mediator or stock exchange must manage and delineate all operations in a cohesive manner. Stock exchange (SE) also acts as the transaction manager to provide consistent, isolated, durable, and atomic transactions for participating entities. However, the work for the stock exchange is not so straightforward as it may sound. With multiple transactions happening per second, the global serializability and concurrency control becomes an issue resulting in multiple threats and vulnerabilities. We propose a novel stock exchange that integrates time series prediction to distributed transactions and understanding the rapid global transactions and limitations of resources at the stock exchange. We use distributed acyclic graph (DAG) based distributed ledger technology IOTA to provide security and consensus for independent users. The paper proposes a time-variant model that adjusts its predictions based on transactions, moments of observations, participating entities, and history. We show that our model outcasts other state-of-art schemes in terms of prediction accuracy. Also, the model is fair, fast, and scalable to handle millions of transactions per second.
Location Aware Clustering: Scalable Authentication Protocol for UAV Swarms Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab IEEE Networking Letters 2021 Abstract PDF
This letter proposes a scalable authentication protocol to address the security vulnerabilities in UAV-base station communication. UAVs are particularly vulnerable to multiple cyberattacks such as physical capture, cloning attacks, eavesdropping, and man-in-middle attacks. Current solutions propose to address these issues using one-to-one authentication. However, the approach is not scalable especially in scenarios where a group of UAVs is deployed to provide services to end-users. The scalability is achieved using the K-Means clustering algorithm. The proposed protocol outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in terms of total authentication time.
UAV SECaaS: Game-Theoretic Formulation for Security as a service in UAV Swarms Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Sikdar, Biplab, and Yu, F. Richard IEEE Systems Journal 2021 PDF
A Secure and Efficient Mutual Authentication Protocol Framework for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab In Globecom Workshop 2021 Abstract PDF
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are becoming increasingly popular owing to their wide application domain. However, the issue of security and privacy is a concern for these UAV-based applications. UAVs are susceptible to multiple threats like the man-in-the-middle attack, the replay attack, the physical attacks. To mitigate these threats and vulnerabilities, we propose a lightweight mutual authentication protocol that ensures network and communication security. The proposed protocol uses Physical Unclonable Function (PUFs), a digital fingerprint device to protect against physical and masquerade attacks. The proposed protocol is robust, secure, and fast compared to other state-of-the-art protocols previously proposed in the literature.
Hardware Testbed based Analytical Performance Modelling for Mobile Task Offloading in UAV Edge Cloudlets Bansal, Gaurang, Tyagi, Abhishek, Narayanan, Vishnu, and Chamola, Vinay In VTC Workshop 2021 Abstract PDF Slides Video
In recent times, there is a paradigm shift to cloud services that offer on-demand computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power. The main reason for the shift is that it removes the user’s active participation to perform computationally intensive tasks. However, current cloud-based services incur high user latency as being deployed very far from the user. One alternative solution to the traditional cloud-based paradigm is drone-based edge computing. In drone edge computing, drones are located near the user and deployed to provide data offload services. There have been many works that have addressed the issue of efficient task assignment in edge devices. This paper presents a concrete analytical performance model for drone cloudlet networks and factors that influence the service response time to the user. The results can be helpful for network administrators to make the current edge computing paradigm faster, more robust and, cost-effective.
SecAuthUAV: A Novel Authentication Scheme for UAV-Ground Station and UAV-UAV Communication Alladi, Tejasvi, Naren, Naren, Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, and Guizani, Mohsen IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 2021 Abstract PDF
Drones, commonly known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming very popular nowadays due to their wide applicability in areas ranging from package delivery systems to automated military applications. Nevertheless, communication security between a UAV and its base station (BS) is critical for completing its task without leaking sensitive information either to the adversaries or to unauthenticated users. UAVs are especially vulnerable to physical and node tampering attacks. Further, since UAV devices are generally equipped with small batteries and limited memory storage, lightweight security techniques are best suited for them. Addressing these issues, a lightweight mutual authentication scheme based on Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) for UAV-BS authentication is presented in this paper. We present a formal security analysis as well as old-fashioned cryptanalysis to show that our protocol provides various security features such as mutual authentication, user anonymity, etc. and is resilient against many security attacks such as masquerade, replay, node tampering attacks, etc. We also show a performance comparison of our protocol with the state-of-the-art UAV-BS authentication protocols, based on computation, communication and memory storage cost.
Security Service Pricing Model for UAV Swarms: A Stackelberg Game Approach Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab In DroneCom, INFOCOM Workshop 2021 Abstract PDF Slides Video
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, popularly known as UAVs, have been used in many applications, from healthcare services to military assignments with diverse capabilities such as data transmission, cellular service provisioning, and computational offloading tasks. UAV’s have been recently used to provide Security as a Service (SaaS). SaaS involves techni- cal solutions like anti-virus and anti-spam software, firewalls, using secure operating systems, etc. UAV’s are resource constrained devices, and thus they are connected to the base station (BS) so that they may avail the computational facilities of the BS. The UAV’s connect themselves to the base station using cluster heads (intermediary devices). At times several UAVs cooperatively come together to serve a given region and such a group of UAVs is called a swarm of UAVs. In real-world scenarios, many stakeholders come together to form UAV swarm configuration proving services to users. Each stakeholder wants to maximize his gains. In this work, we propose a pricing Stackelberg game among UAVs, Cluster heads, and BS by formulating their behavioral utilities. Using particle swarm optimization on each entity’s utility functions, we create an optimal price strategy for each entity to maximize their profit.
S-MAPS: Scalable Mutual Authentication Protocol for Dynamic UAV Swarms Bansal, Gaurang, and Sikdar, Biplab IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 2021 Abstract PDF
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) domain has seen rapid developments in recent years. UAVs have been deployed for many applications and missions like data transmission, cellular service provisioning, and computational offloading tasks etc. Yet, UAV deployment is still limited, partially owing to the security challenges it poses. UAVs are particularly vulnerable to physical capture, cloning attacks, eavesdropping, and man in middle attacks. To address some of these security problems, this paper develops an authentication protocol for use in UAV swarms. To ensure physical security and rapid authentication, the proposed protocol uses Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs). The protocol achieves high scalability compared to the state of the art by authenticating multiple devices at once. The proposed protocol supports dynamic topologies and multi-hop communication by using spanning tree-based traversal. It is also resistant to mobility, device failure, etc., and its improvements are achieved at significantly lower communication and communication cost as compared to state-of-the-art protocols.

2020

Lightweight Mutual Authentication Protocol for V2G Using PUF Bansal, Gaurang, Naren, Naren, Chamola, Vinay, Sikdar, Biplab, Kumar, Neeraj, and Guizani, Mohsen IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 2020 Abstract PDF
Electric vehicles (EVs) have been slowly replacing conventional fuel based vehicles since the last decade. EVs are not only environment-friendly but when used in conjunction with a smart grid, also open up new possibilities and a Vehicle- Smart Grid ecosystem, commonly called V2G can be achieved. This would not only encourage people to switch to environment- friendly EVs or Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), but also positively aid in load management on the power grid, and present new economic benefits to all the entities involved in such an ecosystem. Nonetheless, privacy and security remains a serious concern of smart grids. The devices used in V2G are tiny, inexpensive, and resource constrained, which renders them susceptible to multiple attacks. Any protocol designed for V2G systems must be secure, lightweight, and must protect the privacy of the vehicle owner. Since EVs and charging stations are generally not guarded by people, physical security is also a must. To tackle these issues, we propose Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) based Secure User Key-Exchange Authentication (SUKA) protocol for V2G systems. The proposed protocol uses PUFs to achieve a two-step mutual authentication between an EV and the Grid Server. It is lightweight, secure, and privacy preserving. Simulations show that the proposed protocol performs better and provides more security features than state-of-the-art V2G authentication protocols. The security of the proposed protocol is shown using a formal security model and analysis.
Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Inter Base Station Communication in Heterogeneous Networks Bansal, Gaurang, and Chamola, Vinay In BlockSecSDN, INFOCOM Workshop 2020 Abstract PDF Slides Video
Over the past few years, with increasing mobile traffic and decreasing revenue per user, Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) have become a topic of interest to many stakeholders. HetNets is a combination of networks with different access technologies and cell types working with each other. Mobile network operators are keen to reduce operational expenses by deploying HetNets while they provide better QoS to the user anywhere, anytime wireless connectivity. Although HetNets provide various benefits, yet many open issues need to be addressed to harness their impact. They are also prone to several security threats such as physical attacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, impersonation attacks, replay attacks, and node tampering attacks. Moreover, due to the different nature and structure of each network in a HetNet, secure handover between various wireless networks is a complex task that is not yet resolved. In this paper, we address the issues mentioned above by designing a secure handover mechanism that is resistant to both passive and active attacks. We also show a performance comparison of our protocol with the state-of-the-art protocols for securing hetnets based on computation, communication, and memory storage cost.
Secure Lending: Blockchain and Prospect Theory-Based Decentralized Credit Scoring Model Hassija, Vikas, Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Kumar, Neeraj, and Guizani, Mohsen IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering 2020 Abstract PDF
Credit scoring is a rigorous statistical analysis carried out by lenders and other third parties to access an individual’s creditworthiness. Lenders use credit scoring, to estimate the degree of risk in lending money to an individual. However, credit score evaluation is primarily based on a transaction record, payment history, professional background, etc. sourced from different credit bureaus. So, evaluating a credit score is a laborious and tedious task involving a lot of paperwork. In this paper, we propose how blockchain can provide the solution to decentralized credit scoring evaluation and reducing the amount of dependence of paperwork. Lending money is not always objective but subjective to every lender. The decision of lending involves different levels of risk and uncertainty depending on their perspective. This paper uses prospect theory to model the optimal investment strategy for different risk vs return scenarios.
Deep3DSCan: Deep Residual Network And Morphological Descriptor Based Framework for Lung Cancer Classification And 3D Segmentation Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Narang, Pratik, Kumar, Subham, and Raman, Sundaresan IET Image Processing Journal 2020 Abstract PDF
With the increasing incidence rate of lung cancer patients, early diagnosis could help in reducing the mortality rate. However, accurate recognition of cancerous lesions is immensely challenging owing to factors such as low contrast variation, heterogeneity and visual similarity between benign and malignant nodules. Deep learning techniques have been very effective in performing natural image segmentation with robustness to previously unseen situations, reasonable scale invariance and ability to detect even minute differences. However they usually fail to learn domain-specific features due to the limited amount of available data and domain agnostic nature of these techniques. Moreover, the interpretability limitations of the deep learning approaches hamper the capability of CAD in diagnostic assistance. This work presents an ensemble framework Deep3DSCan for lung cancer segmentation and classification. The deep 3D segmentation network generates the 3D volume of interest (VOI) from CT scans of patients. Furthermore, deep features and handcrafted descriptors are extracted and are merged. The fused features are used for cancer classification. The experiments were conducted on the publicly available LUNA16 dataset. The proposed framework achieves a dice coefficient of 0.958 for segmentation task. The model also obtains an accuracy of 88.93%, AUC of 0.883 and logloss of 0.3247 for the classification task.
RAMA: Real-Time Automobile Mutual Authentication Protocol Using PUF Bansal, Gaurang, Naren, Naren, and Chamola, Vinay In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN), Barcelona, Spain 2020 Abstract PDF Slides Video
The batteries of electric vehicles enable the functionality of V2G networks. The purpose of V2G is to handle the trading of energy for electric vehicles powered by batteries as well as the power grid. This is essential to make more efficient use of the energy of the grid. The electrical energy stored in the EV batteries can function as a power source for the grid and other energy-deficient EVs. The energy stored in the batteries of the EVs could be used to pump power into the grid when the load on the grid is too heavy. Despite its wide-ranging applications, the privacy and safety of intelligent grids continue to be a severe problem. Any protocol designed for V2G applications must be safe, lightweight, and safeguard the car owner’s privacy. As individuals usually do not guard EVs and charging stations, physical security is also a must. To address these issues, we are proposing a Real-time Automotive Mutual Authentication protocol for V2G devices based on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF). PUFs are used by the proposed protocol to obtain a two-step mutual authentication (MA) between an EV and the Grid Server. It is lightweight, safe, and preserves privacy.
A Fast, Secure and Distributed Consensus Mechanism for Energy Trading Among Vehicles Using Hashgraph Bansal, Gaurang, and Bhatia, Ashutosh In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN), Barcelona, Spain 2020 Abstract PDF Presentation
Energy trading among inter vehicles (V2V) offers an efficient response to all the problems presented by future electricity supply. V2V is often envisioned as a peer-to-peer (P2P) model of electric mercantilism for electric vehicle (EV) merchandising. With security vulnerability increasing, confidence in secured third parties is declining. Blockchain is becoming increasingly common as it provides a system for privacy conservation and efficient agreement without the need for trusted third parties. However, all operations in such a scheme are restricted by memory, time, computing capital, energy etc. and it is quite obvious that the mechanism for blockchain agreement is not sufficient to address all of them. In this paper, we present an alternative to the blockchain using Hashgraph which is scalable, fast, fault-tolerant and fair. It is efficient, inexpensive, and DoS resistant fulfilling the requirement of V2V energy trading.
A Machine Learning Approach for Traffic Flow Provisioning in Software Defined Networks Kumar, Subham, Bansal, Gaurang, and Shekhawat, VS In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN), Barcelona, Spain 2020 Abstract PDF Poster
With the recent surge of machine learning and artificial intelligence, many research groups are applying these techniques to control, manage, and operate networks. Soft- ware Defined Networks (SDN) transform the distributed and hardware-centric legacy network into an integrated and dynamic network that provides a comprehensive solution for managing the network efficiently and effectively. The network-wide knowledge provided by SDN can be leveraged for efficient traffic routing in the network. In this work, we explore and illustrate the applicability of machine learning algorithms for selecting the least congested route for routing traffic in a SDN enabled network. The proposed method of route selection provides a list of possible routes based on the network statistics provided by the SDN controller dynamically. The proposed method is implemented and tested in Mininet using Ryu controller.

2019

Smart Stock Exchange Market: A Secure Predictive Decentralised Model Bansal, Gaurang, Hassija, Vikas, Chamola, Vinay, Kumar, Neeraj, and Guizani, Mohsen Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE Globecom, Big Island, HI, USA 2019 Abstract PDF Slides
Energy trading among inter vehicles (V2V) offers an efficient response to all the problems presented by future electricity supply. V2V is often envisioned as a peer-to-peer (P2P) model of electric mercantilism for electric vehicle (EV) merchandising. With security vulnerability increasing, confidence in secured third parties is declining. Blockchain is becoming increasingly common as it provides a system for privacy conservation and efficient agreement without the need for trusted third parties. However, all operations in such a scheme are restricted by memory, time, computing capital, energy etc. and it is quite obvious that the mechanism for blockchain agreement is not sufficient to address all of them. In this paper, we present an alternative to the blockchain using Hashgraph which is scalable, fast, fault-tolerant and fair. It is efficient, inexpensive, and DoS resistant fulfilling the requirement of V2V energy trading.
Blockcom: A blockchain based commerce model for smart communities using auction mechanism Hassija, Vikas, Bansal, Gaurang, Chamola, Vinay, Saxena, Vikas, and Sikdar, Biplab In IEEE International Conference on Communications, Shanghai, China 2019 Abstract PDF Slides
Supply chain is a complex system of organizations, people, information, and resources involved in providing services from supplier to customer. The changing technology has made the survival in commerce highly competitive and price sensitive. Blockchain technology can be the game-changer for decentralizing infrastructure and building a trust layer for business logic. BitCom is a commerce model based on the emerging technology of blockchain. It is a framework deriving its roots from both permissioned and permissionless blockchains to achieve a feasible solution to the problem of automating commerce. The model caters to need of profit maximization for suppliers and consumers using iterative auction mechanism. Parties bid to smart contract which act as auctioneer for maximizing the profit. It uses flexible smart contracts for negotiations and transactions while permissionless entry is provided to the users. Mathematical parameter named credibility score has been created to deal with trust issues in the decentralized network. BitCom provides a fresh perspective on the concept of supply chain and commerce. The objective of model remains to provide enhanced transparency, greater scalability, better security and scope of innovation. It is likely to propel the next industrial revolution, providing a new paradigm for doing business in finance, transportation, shared economy.
SmartChain: A Smart and Scalable Blockchain Consortium for Smart Grid Systems Bansal, Gaurang, Dua, Amit, Ajula, G S, Singh, Maninderpal, and Kumar, Neeraj In IEEE International Conference on Communications, Shanghai, China 2019 Abstract PDF
Smart grid (SG) provides a peer-to-peer energy trading mechanism wherein the electric vehicles (EVs) can trade for energy with their peers using the information and communication technologies. However, the dependence on third party for coordinating the energy trading decisions leads to a bottleneck for any distributed environment. Therefore, blockchain technology can provide a privacy-preserving and effective consensus mechanism without the control of trusted third party. Although blockchain provides inherent secure framework for transactional process, but the this security is because of computational complexity enforced. In SG environment, the conventional blockchain process could not be employed due to limited computational resources with EVs, which makes it difficult to solve the tough computational puzzles to validate the transactions. On the other hand, any compromise on the computation difficulty makes it more vulnerable to various types of attacks. Therefore, in this paper, SmartChain: a blockchain inspired smart and scalable ledger framework which does not require much computational complexity is designed for secure peer-to-peer energy trading in SG ecosystem. The proposed framework is evaluated using the parameters such as execution and validation time. The results obtained depict the superiority of SmartChain in contrast to the conventional blockchain process.