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Grant support

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 Author

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August 18, 2024
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Article

Design 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

Univ Politecn Madrid, ETSI Sistemas Telecomunicac, Madrid 28031, Spain - Author
Univ Politecn Madrid, Inst Energia Solar, Madrid 28040, Spain - Author

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.

Keywords

BleBluetoothC-itsGap rolesInternetModeV2iV2vV2xVehicle-to-everythingVehicle-to-infrastructureVehicle-to-vehicleVehicular networkVehicular networks

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

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-07-26:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 5.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 4 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 1.5.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 4 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
  • Assignment of a Handle/URN as an identifier within the deposit in the Institutional Repository: https://oa.upm.es/89437/

As a result of the publication of the work in the institutional repository, statistical usage data has been obtained that reflects its impact. In terms of dissemination, we can state that, as of

  • Views: 22
  • Downloads: 4

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.