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Virginia Tech

Secure Communication Networks for Connected Vehicles

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

With the advent of electric vehicles (EVs) and the proliferation of vehicle technologies like drive-by-wire and autonomous driving, advanced communication protocols to connect vehicles and the infrastructure have been proposed. However, practical large-scale deployments have been hindered due to caveats such as hardware, and infrastructure demands — including the security of vehicles, given their ubiquitous nature and direct correlation to human safety. As part of this thesis, we look at deploying a practical solution to adopt a secure large-scale vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication architecture. Then, we also try to analyze and detect vulnerabilities in vehicle-to-grid communication for electric vehicles. In the first work, we analyze, build a proof of concept and evaluate the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) smartphones as secure cellular-vehicle-to-everything (CV2X) radios. Here, we study the various possible network topologies considering the long-term evolution (LTE) technology with necessary latency requirements considering security and the associated overhead. We further simulate the proposed method by considering real-world scalability for practical deployment. In the second work, we analyze the ISO15118 standard for EV-to-electric grid communication involving high levels of energy exchange. We develop a grammatical fuzzing architecture to assess and evaluate the implementation of the standard on a road-deployed vehicle to detect security vulnerabilities and shortcomings.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2023

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Mahadevegowda, Spandan
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Gerdes, Ryan M.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Chantem, Thidapat
  • Min, Chang Woo

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:36256
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/113220

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Mahadevegowda, Spandan. Secure Communication Networks for Connected Vehicles. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2023. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/113220