An embedded platform for privacy-friendly road charging applications

Systems based on satellite localization are enabling new scenarios for road charging schemes by offering the possibility to charge drivers as a function of their road usage. An in-vehicle installation of a black box with the capabilities of a Location Based Service terminal suffices to deploy such a scheme. In the most straightforward architecture a back-end server collects vehicle's location data in order to extract the correct fees. However, with industry, governments and users being more and more aware of privacy issues the deployment of such system seems to be contradictory. Our contribution is the demonstration of a practical and functional road charging system based on PriPAYD [1]. Our black box is built guaranteeing most of the processing of location data in real-time, thus minimizing overheads required to ensure security and privacy. The performance of our software-based prototype is tested and proves that the deployment of a privacy-friendly solution can be achieved within a minimum cost increment compared to existing road charging schemes.