A Multi-purpose NIB for IIoT-Enabled Highway Service Management Towards Secure Intelligent Transportation

Smart automated highway service management is an emerging trend in transportation, with a key challenge being the ability to support diverse data sensing and exchange for near real-time decision making. This paper presents a multi-purpose Network-in-Box (NIB) scheme composed of low-cost wireless communication devices to deliver a range of highway services. The proposed NIB framework virtualizes network functions across multiple radio access technologies and enables flexible software reconfiguration of sliced network resources. A case study is conducted on green energy-driven highway lighting service (GHLS), utilizing an inter-lamppost network design as an application of the NIB. The framework’s potential is demonstrated through analytical cost analysis and numerical simulations. The framework is simulated using MATLAB to validate cost of energy, device malfunction probability, and reliability, showing a 40% energy cost reduction when highway occupancy reaches 80%.