A Survey on Privacy-Preserving Electronic Toll Collection Schemes for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Abstract

As part of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Electronic toll collection (ETC) is a type of toll collection system (TCS) which is getting more and more popular as it can not only help to finance the government’s road infrastructure but also it can play a crucial role in pollution reduction and congestion management. As most of the traditional ETC schemes (ETCS) require identifying their users, they enable location tracking. This violates user privacy and poses challenges regarding the compliance of such systems with privacy regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). So far, several privacy-preserving ETC schemes have been proposed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey that systematically reviews and compares various characteristics of these schemes, including components, technologies, security properties, privacy properties, and attacks on ETCS. This survey first categorizes the ETCS based on two technologies, GNSS and DSRC. Then under these categories, the schemes are classified based on whether they provide formal proof of security and support security analysis. We also demonstrate which schemes specifically are/are not resistant to collusion and physical attacks. Then, based on these classifications, several limitations and shortcomings in privacy-preserving ETCS are revealed. Finally, we identify several directions for future research.