Joseph joined SystemX in 2017 to work on his PhD thesis dedicated to the misbehavior detection in Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS). He revisits his experience carry out his doctoral work performed within the SCA project (Secure Cooperative Autonomous systems) and supervised by Télécom Paris.
What was the topic of your dissertation ?
Cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) are revolutionizing our driving experience. Within these systems, vehicles cooperate by exchanging communication messages called Vehicle-to-X (V2X) over the vehicular network. Traffic safety applications use the data from these messages to detect and prevent dangerous situations in time. In the current C-ITS system, messages are signed with digital keys to guarantee their authenticity. However, these do not guarantee the security and accuracy of the data.As part of my thesis, I was interested in the detection of misbehaviors in C-ITS. To do this, I analyzed the semantics of the data of the messages exchanged to detect and identify entities with suspicious behaviours. The detection process to which I have contributed takes place in several stages: local detection, reporting, and global detection. I first evaluated the solutions of existing local detections. I then created a new set of local plausibility detectors to identify misbehaviors. I have also developed a new reporting format and protocol, which has been the subject of a contribution to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). Finally, I defined a whole new architecture for the authority in charge of detecting misbehaviors, based on machine learning.
Throughout my PhD, I also made several contributions to the cooperative intelligent transport systems community by providing the code for all the work carried out under the SCA project in open source format, in order to facilitate research in this field.
What do you remember from your dissertation?
Extremely positive things! I discovered SystemX during an internship. Its unique research environment, bringing together academia and industry, prompted me to continue my work as part of a PhD. I have been fortunate to be supported by experts in their fields who have given me tremendous help. I have learned how to create systems that work and the importance of demonstrating this through research publications on the one hand, and by presenting my work at several scientific conferences on the other hand.
Can you tell us about your favourite memory from your time with SystemX?
The ThesisDay @ SystemX event was most memorable as it gave me the opportunity to share my research during a “3 minutes to convince” session. It was a very enriching experience. We had received training on how to present our research in layman terms and what to do when on stage.
I also had the opportunity to present my thesis work alongside the SCA project team at other events, such as SPRING Paris-Saclay and DigiHall Day.
Do you have any plans for the future?
I would like to become part of the industrial world and work on the deployment of intelligent and cooperative transport systems.
Find out more about Joseph:
Name of PhD dissertation: Misbehavior Detection in Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS)
R&D project: Secure Cooperative Autonomous systems (SCA)
Name of School: Télécom Paris
Last qualification obtained before starting on the PhD: Double Master’s Degree from École des Mines de Saint-Étienne in micro-electronics and cyber-physical systems
