Blockchain-Based Authentication Scheme for Collaborative Traffic Light Systems Using Fog Computing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, authors presented the results of their study and proposed improved solution (scheme) for CSA-based SAR processor, as well as the performance results and comparison (with baseline solutions) of their FPGA-based implementation of this solution in order to show achieved improvements of modified CSA flow. The proposed and implemented CSA-based SAR processor is based on 4 systolic array architecture that can only perform FFT or FFT and phase compensation operations simultaneously. The proposed modified CSA flow is derived to simplifiy the traditional CSA flow by changing the order in which the transpose operation occurs, and thus it is designed to be suitable for modified CSA flow. The proposed design of multiplier for FFT is shared for phase compensation, which allows to achieve improved efficiency and simplied data flow.

The paper is well written and conceived, with the clear and straightforward presentation. There are some minor typos and language errors - the authors are suggested to recheck the paper and correct these.

Author Response

Thanks for the comments. It seems the reviewer uploaded the results for another paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, the authors proposed a Blockchain-based Authentication Scheme for Collaborative Traffic Light Systems Using Fog Computing. The overall manuscript is well written.

• The present article provides the research community with an overview of authentication scheme for collaborative Traffic Light systems using Fog Computing.

• Although the topic is important to the body of literature, but I have some concerns about the ‘scientific contributions’ of this manuscript. Authors are suggested to refine it to highlight the novelty of the work. 

• Essentially, the technical discussion in this manuscript and the information is presented without a clear objective/foundation and motivation.  Authors are suggested to add one motivation subsection in the Introduction section.

•  Authors are suggested to add a comparative analysis table in "Related Work" section. Authors need to clarify the parameters which are improving blockchain performance.

• A thorough proofreading/restructuring/grammar/sentence formation and spelling checking of this article is essential.

• The article reports generic works and old references without any criticism or a clear message to conclude by the readers and add some latest references. Refer below paper and include it in the manuscript to support the claims of latest literature comparison.

E.g.: "When blockchain meets smart grid: Secure energy trading in demand response management"

"Blockchain-Based Peer-to-Peer Transactive Energy Management Scheme for Smart Grid System"

"Fog computing for smart grid systems in the 5G environment: Challenges and solutions"

• In my opinion, it is more important to think of the applicability aspect of the technology and the associated enablers.

• The presented scheme is well presented but lack supportive references. In fact, one should expect a reasonable number of references in order to support the claims by literature. The main purpose of the article is to guide the research community and direct their attention to the most urgent/uncovered research areas in the desired field of research.

• Authors are suggested to include more results in the "Implementation" section to strengthen the quality of the paper. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Coauthor and I are indebted to your pertinent comments and suggestions that helped improving the content and scope of the manuscript. We have carefully read all your valuable comments and addressed them in the revised edition. Below are the list changes in light of your comments/ suggestions. Edited part of the manuscript is highlighted in the revised document.

Comment:  Although the topic is important to the body of literature, but I have some concerns about the ‘scientific contributions’ of this manuscript. Authors are suggested to refine it to highlight the novelty of the work.

Response- To highlight the novelty of the work, several modifications have been made to the paper. A motivation subsection has been added to the introduction section to define the foundation of the work. In addition, a comparative related work table has been added in the related works section. This table has been analyzed using some comparison criteria that we judge to be important. One of these criteria represents the domain applications; we notice that, although negligence of safety in such an area can cause the loss of human lives, only one of the reference papers took into consideration the traffic light system's security. 

Comment

• Essentially, the technical discussion in this manuscript and the information is presented without a clear objective/foundation and motivation.  Authors are suggested to add one motivation subsection in the Introduction section.

Response- Thank you so much for your valuable comment. A motivation subsection is added in the introduction section:

All the issues presented above, as well as the importance of security in such an application domain, motivated us to find a solution that allows a secure collaboration between several traffic light systems of multiple city regions. Furthermore, this motivation pushed us to propose a lightweight authentication Vehicle Detector Authentication Scheme (VDAS) that ensures a secure collaboration while taking into consideration IoT resource constraints. It is obvious that being sure of the identity of the sensor that generates the data while guaranteeing their secure transfer is an important step because if an attacker assumes the identity of a sensor and generates fake data, it could cost human lives. Moreover, the blockchain technology is combined with our authentication scheme to benefit from its decentralization property that permits to face the single point of failure problem. Therefore, our main motivation was how to authenticate the sensor as well as the controller at the same time while ensuring a secure transfer of data and taking into account the reduced capacities of the sensors. In addition, we must not forget the usefulness of smart contracts through which the authentication process has been totally decentralized and secure.

 

Comment

• Authors are suggested to add a comparative analysis table in "Related Work" section. Authors need to clarify the parameters which are improving blockchain performance.

Response- Thank you so much for your suggestion. The modifications have been made on the paper. A comparative analysis table is added in the “Related Work” section (Table 1). In addition, a deep comparative analysis is done using several comparison criteria that we judge important.  Furthermore, the main objective of using blockchain technology with our proposed Vehicle Detector Authentication Scheme (VDAS) is to benefit from blockchain decentralization property that permits us to face the single point of failure problem avoiding the need for a trusted third party. One of our future works is to propose an efficient consensus algorithm to improve blockchain performance.

Comment

 

• A thorough proofreading/restructuring/grammar/sentence formation and spelling checking of this article is essential.

Response- Thank you so much for your comment. Proofreading of this paper is done. Modifications are highlighted in the manuscript.

Comment

• The article reports generic works and old references without any criticism or a clear message to conclude by the readers and add some latest references. Refer below paper and include it in the manuscript to support the claims of latest literature comparison.

 Response- Thank you so much for your suggestion. References have been added. A deep comparative analysis of related works papers is presented based on some comparison criteria.

Comment

• The presented scheme is well presented but lack supportive references. In fact, one should expect a reasonable number of references in order to support the claims by literature. The main purpose of the article is to guide the research community and direct their attention to the most urgent/uncovered research areas in the desired field of research.

Response- Thank you so much for your comment. References have been added in the related work section. Besides, a comparative analysis has been presented.

 

Comment

• Authors are suggested to include more results in the "Implementation" section to strengthen the quality of the paper. 

Response-

In Section 6, we added three subsections with new results. The first subsection reports live test of the proposed IoT-enabled sensor node for the detection of vehicle crossing  a traffic light system. The second subsection details the communication protocol used between the sensor node and the traffic light controller that runs Ganache. The last added subsection report the energy consumption and latency of the proposed system.

 We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in it. We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Once again thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

PPlease see the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer2’s first round Comments

 

Dear Reviewer,

Coauthor and I are indebted to your pertinent comments and suggestions that helped improving the content and scope of the manuscript. We have carefully read all your valuable comments and addressed them in the revised edition. Below are the list changes in light of your comments/ suggestions. Edited part of the manuscript is highlighted in the revised document.

 

• In the abstract, there is a sentence with two words “and” too close of each other: “while reducing overheads, and latency, and maintaining security”
• Response- Thank you so much for your valuable comment. The error has been fixed.  
• In the abstract, please rewrite this sentence: “Evaluation of communication and computation costs showed that VDAS has low communication and computation costs”
• Response- Thank you for your comment. The sentence has been rewritten.
• In the last paragraph of Section 1, VDAS initial letters should be in capital letters: “vehicle-Detector Authentication Scheme (VDAS)”
• Response- Thank you so much for your comment. The issue has been fixed.
• The last sentence of subsubsection 3.1.1 appears to be incomplete: “Several consensus algorithms exist from which Proof of Work (POW), Proof of Stake (POS) and Distributed Proof of Stake (DPOS).”
• Response- Thank you so much for your comment. The issue has been completed.
• In Figure 2, it says “Weast”, instead of “West”.
• Response- Thank you so much for your comment. The word has been corrected.
• In Algorithm 1, all lines are numbered as 0, instead of a sequence of natural numbers.
• Response- Thank you so much for your comment. Lines numbers have been fixed.
• The end of the second-to-last paragraph of page 7 is incomplete, as a number 5 appears, which I guess it refers to Figure 5. Please complete that sentence.
• Response- Thank you for your comment. The sentence has been completed.
• In the first paragraph of section 4, it says: “it permits to authentication of the sensor nodes”, where “to” should be substituted with “the”.
• Response- Thank you for your comment. The word “to” has been replaced by the word “the”.
• In the first sentence of subsection 4.1, the word “latter” does not apply.
• Response- Thank you for your comment. The sentence has been reworded.
• The first two sentences of subsubsection 5.3.1 should be linked together by a comma.
• Response- Thank you so much for your valuable comment. The link has been done.
• In the second sentence of subsubsection 5.3.2, the semicolon should be changed with a comma and the comma after the word “whereas” should be deleted.
• Response- Thank you for your comment. The issue has been resolved.
• The first two sentences of section 6 should be separated by a space.
• Response- Thank you for your comment. The space has been added.
• The last two sentences of page 15 should be link together by a comma.
• Response- Thank you so much for your valuable comment. The link has been done.
•  
• In the first sentence of page 16, I suggest to include a reference to gas, such as https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2022.100074
• Response- Thank you so much for your valuable comment. The reference has been added.

We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in it. We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Once again thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The topic presented in the manuscript is interesting however it has many drawbacks that have to be improved to accept the manuscript: 1. Figure 1 is weak - what is its contribution? no clear - I recommend to remove it 2. contribution of the manuscript is not well presented - I propose to use less point - e.g. 3-4 but specify it with details 3. in section 2 each paragraph starts by "In ..." - please change it, it not well given - also please compare the presented works and compare with your proposed approach 4. Table 1 is to small and not visible 5. the proposed architecture must be presented in the graphical form but not so general as presented - give some schemas, diagrams with details 6. also the presented algorithms, logic part of the proposed approach have to be presented in form of workflows, activity diagrams or schemas 7. change the name of subsection :3.1.1. Terminology" 8. change the background of figures 2 and 5 - black is  the worst one 9. what is the contribution of figures 2 and 4?
10. figure 6 is rather not a figure - what it is in fact??? 11. the names of sections and subsections have to be more detail 12. conclusions section has to be extended by the discussion
13. figure 8 is not clear and not visible - I propose to remove it or improve
14. remove figure 11 - it is weak 15. what is the contribution of figures 10, 12 and 13?
     

 

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer

Thank you for your time in reviewing the revised manuscript. We attentively examined your remarks and addressed them in the manuscript. A complete list of changes is included.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All comments incorporated.

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer.

Thank you for taking the time to evaluate the amended manuscript. We are grateful for your insightful suggestions, which helped to improve the breadth and content of the work. We are very pleased to note that we responded to your feedback with zeal and dedication.

Reviewer 3 Report

The changes introduced in the article cover the suggestions expressed in my review.

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer

Thank you for taking the time to evaluate the amended manuscript. We are grateful for your insightful suggestions, which helped to improve the breadth and content of the work. We are very pleased to note that we responded to your feedback with zeal and dedication.

Reviewer 4 Report

Most of my comments were taken into account.