Publications

2021

1. IEEE IoT Journal

   A Survey on Supply Chain Security: Application Areas, Security Threats, and Solution Architectures

   Hassija, Vikas, Chamola, Vinay, Gupta, Vatsal, Jain, Sarthak, and Guizani, Nadra

   IEEE Internet of Things Journal 2021

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   The rapid improvement in the global connectivity standards has escalated the level of trade taking place among different parties. Advanced communication standards are allowing the trade of all types of commodities and services. Furthermore, the goods and services developed in a particular region are transcending boundaries to enter into foreign markets. Supply chains play an essential role in the trade of these goods. To be able to realize a connected world with no boundary restrictions in terms of goods and services, it is imperative to keep the associated supply chains transparent, secure, and trustworthy. Therefore, some fundamental changes in the current supply chain architecture are essential to achieve a secure trade environment. This article discusses the supply chain’s security-critical application areas and presents a detailed survey of the security issues in the existing supply chain architecture. Various emerging technologies, such as blockchain, machine learning (ML), and physically unclonable functions (PUFs) as solutions to the vulnerabilities in the existing infrastructure of the supply chain have also been discussed. Recent studies reviewed in this work reveal a growing sentiment in the industry toward new and emerging technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and ML. While many organizations have already adopted IoT applications and artificial intelligence systems in their businesses, widespread adoption of blockchain remains distant. It has also been found that over the past decade, PUF-based authentication systems have gained much ground. However, a proper reference model for their implementation in complex supply chains is still missing.

2. IEEE T-ITS

   Traffic Jam Probability Estimation Based on Blockchain and Deep Neural Networks

   Hassija, Vikas, Gupta, Vatsal, Garg, Sahil, and Chamola, Vinay

   IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 2021

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   The exponential surge in the number of vehicles on the road has aggravated the traffic congestion problem across the globe. Several attempts have been made over the years to predict the traffic scenario accurately and consequently avoiding further congestion. Crowdsourcing has come forward as one of the most adopted methods for predicting traffic intensity using live data. However, the privacy concerns and the lack of motivation for the live users to help in the traffic prediction process have rendered existing crowdsourcing models inefficient. Towards this end, we present an advanced blockchain-based secure crowdsourcing model. Not only does our model ensure privacy preservation of the users, but by incorporating a revenue model, it also provides them with an incentive to participate in the traffic prediction process willingly. For accurate and efficient traffic jam probability estimation, our work proposes a neural network-based smart contract to be deployed onto the blockchain network. The results reveal that the proposed model is highly efficient in terms of attaining high participation and consequently obtaining highly accurate predictions.

2020

1. IEEE Access

   A Comprehensive Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Role of IoT, Drones, AI, Blockchain, and 5G in Managing its Impact

   Chamola, Vinay, Hassija, Vikas, Gupta, Vatsal, and Guizani, Mohsen

   IEEE Access 2020

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   The unprecedented outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus, termed as COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO), has placed numerous governments around the world in a precarious position. The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, earlier witnessed by the citizens of China alone, has now become a matter of grave concern for virtually every country in the world. The scarcity of resources to endure the COVID-19 outbreak combined with the fear of overburdened healthcare systems has forced a majority of these countries into a state of partial or complete lockdown. The number of laboratory-confirmed coronavirus cases has been increasing at an alarming rate throughout the world, with reportedly more than 3 million confirmed cases as of 30 April 2020. Adding to these woes, numerous false reports, misinformation, and unsolicited fears in regards to coronavirus, are being circulated regularly since the outbreak of the COVID-19. In response to such acts, we draw on various reliable sources to present a detailed review of all the major aspects associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the direct health implications associated with the outbreak of COVID-19, this study highlights its impact on the global economy. In drawing things to a close, we explore the use of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and 5G, among others, to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 outbreak.

2. IWCMC 2020

   A Framework for Secure Vehicular Network using Advanced Blockchain

   Hassija, Vikas, Chamola, Vinay, Gupta, Vatsal, and Chalapathi, G. S. S

   In 2020 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (IWCMC) 2020

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   Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) poses to be a promising technology for the future since it increases the comfort level of the drivers while also enhancing the safety measures for them. The main aim of VANETs is to enable communication among vehicles and roadside units (RSUs) using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-RSU (V2R) networks. VANET applications have a vast potential for growth owing to the increasing number of smart cities around the globe and advancement taking place in the technology sector. However, with all their benefits, VANETs also face several security challenges. The sensitive nature of data being transferred turns VANETs prone to malicious attacks. To overcome the security challenges, this paper proposes a distributed Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) enabled vehicular network comprising several requesting vehicles and RSUs. The proposed model is based on advanced blockchain and therefore provides a strong level of security and data immutability. Furthermore, the interactions between the requesting vehicles and the RSUs have been modeled using an auction-based game-theoretic smart contract deployed on the blockchain.

3. IWCMC 2020

   A Blockchain-based Framework for Secure Data Offloading in Tactile Internet Environment

   Hassija, Vikas, Chamola, Vinay, Gupta, Vatsal, and Chalapathi, G. S. S

   In 2020 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (IWCMC) 2020

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   The rapid increase in the number of mobile devices across the globe has brought a new challenge to the forefront, one of mobile traffic management. The ever-increasing number of mobile devices leads to the generation of a large amount of data and computationally intensive applications, which contributes heavily to cellular network congestion. To solve this issue, we propose a mobile data offloading scheme based on a distributed ledger technology (DLT). Existing mobile data offloading schemes based on DLT employ conventional blockchain to set up a peer-to-peer (P2P) network of mobile users. Although these schemes have gained ground in improving the Quality of Experience (QoE) for end-users, they lack efficiency and scalability. Furthermore, generic blockchain does not provide timestamp ordering of events, which is necessary to ensure the computation of delay-sensitive tasks. To overcome these challenges, we propose the use of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) data structure for mobile data offloading. Finally, to ensure time and cost optimality, a game-theoretic approach has been proposed in this paper.

4. ACM Mobihoc

   A Blockchain-Based Framework for Energy Trading between Solar Powered Base Stations and Grid

   Hassija, Vikas, Gupta, Vatsal, Chamola, Vinay, and Kanhare, Salil

   In Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing 2020

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   The rapidly increasing mobile traffic across the globe has proliferated the deployment of cellular base stations, which has, in turn, led to an increase in the power consumption and carbon footprint of the telecommunications industry. In recent times, solar-powered base stations (SPBSs) have gained much popularity in the telecom sector due to their ability to make operations more sustainable. However, some potential energy benefits rendered by the SPBSs have not yet been realized. In areas with dense base station deployment or low mobile traffic, SPBSs store surplus energy, which, in most instances, gets lost due to limited charge storage capacity of the batteries. To limit the wastage of energy, an appropriate mechanism enabling the utilization of excess energy produced by these base stations can be adopted. To this end, we model a Base Station-to-Grid (BS2G) network in which the grid can utilize surplus energy spared by the SPBSs. To overcome challenges in regards to scalability, robustness, and cost-optimization, we propose using the blockchain technology to create the BS2G network. Blockchain is a distributed ledger designed to record transactions in a transparent, lightweight, and tamper-proof manner. To make energy trade between base stations and the grid cost-effective, a game-theoretical approach has also been adopted in this paper. The proposed model simplifies the process of energy trading while also making it cost-optimal.