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We want to express our gratitude to the SENER Foundation for their support and funding of the project "Making Roads Smart: Long-Range, Low-Energy Wireless Traffic Signs", which has made the development of this work possible.
Analysis of institutional authors
Perez-Yuste, AntonioAuthorPitarch-Blasco, JordiAuthorNunez, NeftaliCorresponding AuthorDesign of New BLE GAP Roles for Vehicular Communications
Publicated to:Sensors. 24 (15): 4835- - 2024-08-01 24(15), DOI: 10.3390/s24154835
Authors: Perez-Yuste, A; Pitarch-Blasco, J; Falcon-Darias, FA; Nuñez, N
Affiliations
Abstract
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a prominent short-range wireless communication protocol widely extended for communications and sensor systems in consumer electronics and industrial applications, ranging from manufacturing to retail and healthcare. The BLE protocol provides four generic access profile (GAP) roles when it is used in its low-energy version, i.e., ver. 4 and beyond. GAP roles control connections and allow BLE devices to interoperate each other. They are defined by the Bluetooth special interest group (SIG) and are primarily oriented to connect peripherals wirelessly to smartphones, laptops, and desktops. Consequently, the existing GAP roles have characteristics that do not fit well with vehicular communications in cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS), where low-latency communications in high-density environments with stringent security demands are required. This work addresses this gap by developing two new GAP roles, defined at the application layer to meet the specific requirements of vehicular communications, and by providing a service application programming interface (API) for developers of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications. We have named this new approach ITS-BLE. These GAP roles are intended to facilitate BLE-based solutions for real-world scenarios on roads, such as detecting road traffic signs or exchanging information at toll booths. We have developed a prototype able to work indistinctly as a unidirectional or bidirectional communication device, depending on the use case. To solve security risks in the exchange of personal data, BLE data packets, here called packet data units (PDU), are encrypted or signed to guarantee either privacy when sharing sensitive data or authenticity when avoiding spoofing, respectively. Measurements taken and their later evaluation demonstrated the feasibility of a V2X BLE network consisting of picocells with a radius of about 200 m.
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Quality index
Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel
The work has been published in the journal Sensors due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2024 there are still no calculated indicators, but in 2023, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Instrumentation.
Independientemente del impacto esperado determinado por el canal de difusión, es importante destacar el impacto real observado de la propia aportación.
Según las diferentes agencias de indexación, el número de citas acumuladas por esta publicación hasta la fecha 2025-07-26:
- WoS: 1
- Scopus: 2
Impact and social visibility
Leadership analysis of institutional authors
There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (PEREZ YUSTE, ANTONIO) and Last Author (NUÑEZ MENDOZA, NEFTALI).
the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been NUÑEZ MENDOZA, NEFTALI.