VEhicular Secure Network Open Simulator (VESNOS): A Cyber-security oriented co-simulation platform for connected and automated driving

Connected vehicles are a big part of the automotive industry’s overall growth trend that may be utilized to improve transportation safety, expand mobility options, lower expenses, and provide new job possibilities. Thus, a complete examination of connected driving is required before the large-scale implementation in reality, which may be done affordably and efficiently using a reliable simulation platform. Current traffic simulators ease the research and development of connected vehicles by offering incremental enhancements to traditional traffic flow modeling approaches, which cannot replicate the features of real-world connected vehicles. Moreover, current standard security features that are used by the U.S. Department of Transportation or other research entities are not considered. Network-level evaluation incorporating large-scale traffic networks and Vehicle-To-Everything (V2X) communications should also be addressed. This study develops a novel and comprehensive co-simulation platform for conventional, connected, and automated driving that tightly integrates the main components of V2X communications, cyber-security protocol, traffic networks, and conventional vehicle models. Three major open-source components, SUMO, OMNeT++, and security credential management system (SCMS) based V2X simulator, are integrated and interconnected via the Traffic Control Interface (TraCI). The whole simulation platform can be deployed in a Client/Server model. Case studies show that the proposed platform provides an appropriate and trustworthy testbed for examining the possible social/economic effects of connected driving under a security credential management system.