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    <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
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    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
    <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
    <image>
      <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
      <url>https://rip.trb.org/Images/PageHeader-wTitle-RIP.jpg</url>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/</link>
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    <item>
      <title>Examination of Light-Based Directed Vehicle to Everything Communications Systems for Bridge Strike Detection (Using ImpLi-Fi)</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2727317</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In this proposed project, the ImpLi-Fi team - consisting of the University of Michigan-Dearborn and SpectraLux, LLC - will deploy a reliable and directed light-based wireless infrastructure-to-vehicle communication technology to warn at-risk trucks of imminent bridge strikes. Once shown to be feasible, the same concept can also be extended to flash flood warning, wrong-way driving, etc. Unlike wireless communications using radio-frequency (RF), which are always omni-directional, ImpLi-Fi uses light, allowing transmissions to be focused so that they only target specific impacted vehicles, thereby avoiding the risk of annoying/desensitizing other parallel road users.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:22:08 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2727317</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Assessing Cybersecurity Risks of Vehicle Accessories: From Wireless Connectivity to Firmware</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2676003</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The research team propose to conduct comprehensive penetration testing on various emerging vehicle accessories. For example, since 2019, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has mandated the use of electronic logging devices (ELDs) for most commercial motor vehicle drivers in the United States. These devices are designed to monitor hours of service (HOS) to reduce fatigue-related accidents. Additionally, OBD-II dongles provide diagnostic capabilities for drivers, repair technicians, and insurance companies. Other examples include dash cameras, vehicle health monitors, and infotainment adapters. Recent research including that of the research team has shown that accessories (e.g., ELD, and CarPlay adapter) can serve as attack vectors for compromising vehicle systems. Given that modern vehicles are safety-critical systems, vulnerabilities in these accessories may pose serious real-world risks. More specifically, these accessories typically operate via wireless connections to smartphones, allowing users to manage device settings and monitor performance through companion apps. As a result, vulnerabilities may exist across three components: (1) wireless connectivity (e.g., Bluetooth), (2) mobile applications, and (3) device firmware. As a result, the research team proposes to conduct a comprehensive penetration test on these in-vehicle accessories to reveal any potential vulnerabilities. 

First, the research team will examine the wireless connection between accessories and smartphones, the initial point of interaction. If unsecured, this connection could be exploited by an attacker to gain unauthorized access and control. The research team's prior work on OBD-II dongles has shown that many of these devices lack authentication, allowing attackers to connect even while a driver is actively using them. The research team will assess whether similar vulnerabilities are present in other types of accessories. Next, the team will reverse engineer the companion applications. Building on its earlier work, which revealed CAN command embedded in app code, the research team will extend its analysis to additional accessories. CAN commands are powerful; they can be used to perform operations such as unlocking doors or activating turn signals. Moreover, these apps may store sensitive data, especially in the case of ELDs, which require user authentication to track driver identity and activity. The research team will develop an automated framework that can extract and analyze relevant data from applications, regardless of devices.
Finally, the research team will collect and analyze firmware from these accessories to identify embedded security flaws. The research team will create a methodology to automate vulnerability detection, using techniques such as fuzzing, symbolic execution, and fingerprinting. If the firmware uses outdated or vulnerable open-source components, these could be inherited flaws that present systemic risks.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:17:10 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2676003</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Instrumentation And Monitoring For G-Beam/Stillwater Avenue Bridge Replacement</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2582413</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In the proposed project, the research team plans to deploy an extensive instrumentation and communication system that will be embedded in the G-Beam girders proposed for the Stillwater Avenue bridge in Orono/Old Town.  Some of the details of the specific monitoring plan will need to be deferred to coincide with girder design.
The study will include the following. First, an array of fiber optic cabling will be installed along the longitudinal beam axis at different locations relative to the neutral axis.  Each cable will include discrete sensors at different locations along the beam axis to capture strain at those points.  Second, an array of accelerometers will be located it key locations in order to capture frequencies and modes of vibration during service.  Both the accelerometers and the fiber optic system will be connected to a communications network that both collects data from the sensor array and broadcasts the data over a wireless network to a server at University of Maine (UMaine).  Depending on collection rates, the data will either be transmitted over a conventional 5G cellular network, or more likely via a closed network that sends the data through a series of discrete repeaters in between the bridge site and the server.  Third, the team proposes a system of digital cameras that will be used both to trigger the acquisition and transmission system, but also through machine vision, be able to identify the vehicle type (e.g. number of axles.)  Once triggered, the array of strain gages and accelerometers, will preprocess data and send to the UMaine server.  In this way, resulting strain and vibration data can be tied to load types.  Fourth, a weather station will monitor current temperature, sunlight, and relative humidity data to complement the acquired structural data.  Depending on design issues, additional on-site sensors can monitor water level, ice status, and other environmental conditions that may be relevant. Finally, we will conduct diagnostic live load tests on the completed structure immediately before it is opened to traffic and approximately one year after its completion]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:23:33 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2582413</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Development of Reliable Wireless Connectivity in Support of e-Ticketing System in Nebraska Rural Construction Sites</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2507236</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The research team proposes Site-Net, a low-cost and easy-to-use private wireless network to address the poor e-ticketing connectivity issue and advance the current e-ticketing practices. The objectives of Site-Net are cost-efficiency and automation. Cost efficiency will ensure the low cost of capital expenditure for the whole system and can be applied to various scenarios. Automation will ensure that the network will operate automatically without human intervention in the field. The Site-Net includes multiple components, i.e., one cellular base station with an embedded omnidirectional antenna, one embedded core network, a LEO backhaul, and multiple mobile devices. The design and development of Site-Net will leverage the unique experiences of Husker-Net (deployed by the research team), which is the first-ever campus-scale private 5G network in Nebraska.
Another aspect of the development involves integrating long-range (LoRa) radios into the Site-Net to automatically record truck plate numbers and collect paper-load tickets from truck drivers, helping CTS better manage e-Tickets and ensuring their safety at construction sites. LoRa offers significant advantages, including an extended communication range—up to 3 miles in urban areas and 10 miles in rural settings—at a low cost, with individual nodes costing less than $900 (LoRa: $200, Jetson Nano: $500, camera: $200) to assemble. These strengths allow for seamless connectivity between devices spread over several miles, all while requiring minimal infrastructure. We will evaluate the efficiency of our integrated Site-Net and Lo-RaWAN wireless network with the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT)’s existing wireless tools offered by wireless and e-Ticketing vendors.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:08:47 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2507236</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Hardening the Economical Acquisition of Intersection Data to Improve System Integrity</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2425221</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Conventional implementation methods for critical connected and automated vehicle system information flows are indeterminant and have many well-known security vulnerabilities. A novel communication protocol implementation will give stakeholders the opportunity to evaluate a new system implementation paradigm that provides enhanced levels of information integrity.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Sep 2024 11:02:56 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2425221</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Integrated Sensing and Communication for Intelligent Road-Traffic Management</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2420219</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Smart roads, where sensors provide information about traffic density,
speed, etc., enable advanced traffic management tools that reduce accidents, traffic jams, and
environmental damage. However, current implementations based on sensors built into the road
surface are expensive, prone to mechanical damage, and have a limited lifetime. Wireless sensing,
i.e., radar, promises to avoid these drawbacks, yet the construction of a completely new wireless
infrastructure for this purpose is cost-prohibitive. An alluring way of avoiding these problems is the
use of existing cellular 5G infrastructure, and to develop mechanisms for Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC), such that the radar operation can “piggyback” on the communications
signals, without significantly reducing the communication data rates or otherwise wasting the
precious spectrum resources. While sensing of the location of cellphone (user equipment (UE)) location by the network infrastructure nodes (base station (BS)) is commonly used today, it does
not provide information about road users that do not have an active cellular connection (henceforth called Non-transmitting road users (NTRUs)). However, one can also consider a transmitting
UE as a radar transmitter, such that the receiving BS can act as a radar receiver and thus determine
the location of the NTRUs by extracting, with suitable processing, the signal echoes stemming from
the reflection on the NTRUs. Importantly, the signals that need to be sent for communication
purposes can be largely used for the radar task, thus largely preserving the spectral efficiency of
the communications tasks, thus providing true ISAC. This concept of bistatic, uplink ISAC has been
formulated in the past. However, the assumptions made in the existing literature are far from the
constraints of the 5G standard, which any practical system must adhere to. Furthermore, they have
not considered the question of joint multi-user optimization of beamforming and resource allocation.
The proposed project will overcome all these issues. It will start by selecting suitable, standards
Integrated Sensing and Communication for intelligent
road-traffic management
compliant 5G signals that can be gainfully used for radar purposes. Then it will proceed to the
core challenges, which is finding a suitable joint beamforming and resource allocation for the
multi-UE situation, where different UEs transmit quasi-simultaneously (though on orthogonal
time-frequency resources), and are received with different beamformers by the BS. In all this,
the suitable balance between retaining the performance of the communication links, and
providing good radar performance, needs to be found. Finally the research team will perform channel measurements specifically designed to isolate the channel components relevant for communication, and
for the sensing, and use those measurements to assess the achievable performance with the
derived beamforming + resource allocation techniques.
Innovation and Research Significance: the project will break new ground on the theory side, as
the joint beamforming/resource allocation problem has generally been little explored, and – more
importantly – is completely new for the multi-transmitter case. Formulating and solving this associated problem is thus important from a theoretical point of view. In terms of experiments, there
are to the team's knowledge no existing measurements under the relevant constraints (uplink, multiple
transmitters, urban environment, sub-6 GHz frequency range) that extract the contributions from
NTRUs.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 24 Aug 2024 11:03:42 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2420219</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Unmanned Aircraft System Communications Mesh Test Deployment </title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2122514</link>
      <description><![CDATA[In several deployments of unmanned aircraft systems and autonomous ground-based vehicle
technology, a gap has been discovered when vehicles are transiting between locations that may have
strong 4G/5G cellular communication availability and those locations that may have little. Several new
technologies exploring the possibility of a communications mesh network have entered the market and
may have strong benefit for a variety of connected and autonomous vehicle (air and ground)
applications.

This research would explore the ability of this technology to support beyond visual line of sight
unmanned aircraft deployments and may support ground-based applications as well. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have both identified connectivity (V2V, V2I, V2X) as critical to enabling advanced aerial
mobility, specifically to address safety and operational effectiveness (communication availability) per
the FAA ConOps for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (including BVLOS).

Similarly, advanced ground mobility (autonomous vehicle operation) has identified the same concerns.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:48:38 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2122514</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Transfer of Technologies for Performance Degradation Prediction and Channel Switching in Vehicular Networks under Harsh Weather Conditions and Integration with State-of-the-Art Products</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2335141</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This study promoted and realized the transfer of the technologies developed for performance degradation detection and channel switching in vehicular networks under harsh weather conditions. The results of previous research have shown that harsh weather conditions can pose serious threats on the reliability of vehicular communications and the technologies the research team developed can effectively mitigate such threats, but the technology the team developed must be applied and integrated with practical, usable products to bring substantial benefits to the society. The team aims to achieve this by focusing on the integration of their technology with state-of-the-art products in the industry. This effort will be accompanied by student training and workshop activities to foster next-generation researchers who have expertise in this field and enhance social awareness of the threats that harsh weather conditions can cause on transportation safety and the viable solution that the technology can provide.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 06 Feb 2024 17:30:48 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2335141</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Emerging Land Mobile Radio Communications Guide</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2197876</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Transportation agencies and public safety organizations frequently lack the subject-matter expertise to select appropriate technology, including communications systems. State, local, tribal, and territorial departments of transportation (DOTs) have invested heavily in land mobile radio (LMR) communications systems to support their field staff during daily activities and incident response or emergencies, and LMR communication continues to be essential to public safety practitioners, including for infrastructure protection, coordination, operations, and emergency response.

NCHRP Project 03-129, "Essential Communications: A Guide to Land Mobile Radio," produced a 483-page guide. Research is complete, but the guide needs to be revised to be suitable for AASHTO consideration.

The objective of this research is to revise the NCHRP Project 03-129 guide and to prepare the final guide for publication under the proposed title Emerging Land Mobile Radio Communications Guide.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 19 Jun 2023 16:37:39 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2197876</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Bridge Avoidance in River-based Drone Autonomy</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2087441</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This research aims to create open-source autonomous drone software to transform rivers into 21st century drone highways.  The research team will explore vision-based navigation on ultra-light drones, with offloading of compute-intensive processing over wireless links to ground-based infrastructure.  A major challenge is the presence of numerous bridges, whose large metallic structures distort wireless signals and lead to unreliable GPS-based navigation.  Overcoming this will be the focus of the team's research.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2022 11:57:25 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2087441</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>ITS Boulder: 5G and CV2X Analysis and Use Cases - Phase 2</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2067971</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The purpose of this project is to provide the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) with technical expertise to analyze the longer-term evolution of cellular to the fifth generation (5G) and the shorter-term capabilities of long-term evolution (LTE) cellular V2X (CV2X) concept devices on the transportation system.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2022 16:26:15 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2067971</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>ATC: Next Generation Wireless Communications Testing (U.S. Army Aberdeen)</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2067970</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The purpose of this project is for the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen, Maryland base to provide the Intelligent Transportation System Joint Program Office (ITS-JPO) with technical assistance and expertise for executing Phase II of the USDOT-Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)’s spectrum sharing test plan.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2022 16:26:15 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2067970</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Exploring Cellular-Based Private Wireless Networks for the U.S. Aviation Industry



</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2007988</link>
      <description><![CDATA[An airport is both an organization and a facility with a complex network of stakeholders and systems (airlines, federal and state agencies, ground handlers, police, fire, etc.), all focused on the safe, secure, and efficient movement of aircraft, cargo, passengers, and other assets. Airports typically have a large campus and a complex set of connectivity requirements serving a variety of operational and customer service needs. These complex systems, across thousands of acres and millions of square feet of interior and exterior space, must communicate in a robust, high-bandwidth, low-latency, secure fashion. Cellular-based private wireless networks (PWNs) have the potential to improve and expand connectivity across these complex systems and large areas.  

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has allocated the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), which is the 3.55–3.7 GHz band, for these types of complex environments. The OnGo Alliance, a coalition of companies, has been addressing certification standards and encouraging the adoption of technology that would provide connectivity in this spectrum band, especially as the industry advances into newer standards of wireless access technology.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this research is to develop a guide that identifies and discusses opportunities and challenges for the deployment of cellular-based PWNs at U.S. airports over CBRS spectrum. This should include a 4–5 minute explainer video that clearly and succinctly describes a cellular-based PWN and discusses its application in the airport environment. The research should address risk, resiliency, security implications, and ramifications for current and future applicable regulations. In addition, the research should identify and address the stakeholders that may participate in, benefit from, and/or be affected by the implementation of this technology.  ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 16 Aug 2022 17:13:52 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2007988</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Improving Freight Transport Mobility and Efficiency via Synchronization</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1923097</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Description:  This research project will explore opportunities for dynamic re-planning of a facility’s inbound and outbound shipments as well as the rescheduling of trucks to minimize the impact of disruptions on the supply chain. A proof of concept system, focusing on cross-docks, will be developed. The goal of the proof-of-concept is to demonstrate how current connected vehicles and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies can be used to enable two-way communications between the cross-dock and connected trucks at different distances/time intervals to enable synchronized operations. To accomplish this, cross-dock operations and truck movements will be simulated and evaluated in an emulated environment using the Connected Vehicle Application Development Platform (CVDeP) developed by the Center for Connected Multimodal Mobility (C2M2).

Intellectual Merit: The goals and objectives of the proposed research are to explore opportunities for dynamic re-planning of a facility’s inbound and outbound shipments as well as the rescheduling of trucks to minimize the impact of disruptions on the supply chain. A proof of concept system will be developed to show that dynamic re-planning and rescheduling can be facilitated by using connected vehicles and V2I. It is anticipated that the proposed proof-of-concept can be extended and applied to actual freight systems. Successful implementation of freight synchronization will create a transportation system that is: (1) more resilient to disruptions and (2) more efficient by requiring fewer resources to produce higher throughput. Additional benefits include reduced cost, fuel/energy consumption, and carbon footprint.

Broader Impacts: The broad aim of this research project is to produce a useful and practical tool. To this end, the developed models and tools will be made available for use by South Carolina’s DOT, Council of Governments, and Department of Commerce. Codes, sample data sets, and tutorials will be made available on the C2M2 website as well as on Github for other researchers to access, analyze, and extend.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 06 Mar 2022 14:39:27 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1923097</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Development of a Smartphone-Based Road Performance Data Collection Tool</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1722359</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The objectives of this research is listed as follows:
(1) The first objective of this research would be to develop a smartphone-based (mobile application) pavement roughness measurement system for collecting roughness data at an appropriate frequency required for pavement management and maintenance planning.
(2) The second objective is to identify and evaluate the potential capacities of a smartphone-based tool for detecting and measuring other road surface distress types including cracking, rutting, faulting, and so on.
(3) The third objective is to develop a standardized nonproprietary data collection tool that can be used to collect roughness data required for pavement management and would also have the capabilities of providing the location and optional sensor data necessary for automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems.
(4) The fourth objective would be to test and calibrate the standardized nonproprietary collection tool for the various selected brands and types of popular Android smartphones in comparison to Class 1 profilometer specified by ASTM E 950 (e.g., high speed inertial profilometer unit, if available) with known high accuracy of international roughness index (IRI)wirel and global positioning system (GPS) values to allow for field implementation being used in different types of vehicles.
(5) The fifth objective is to evaluate effective options to provide wireless communication links to deliver data between the smartphone or nonproprietary collection tool and the ICEA Service Bureau.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2020 17:08:14 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1722359</guid>
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