Dr. David Eckhoff

I am a Principal Scientist and the Director of the MoVES Lab at TUMCREATE, Singapore. My research focuses on future transportation technologies, simulation, the smart city, and privacy.

Current Research

City Mobility Simulator

citymos

CityMoS is a city-scale mobility simulator to holistically study intelligent transport systems, developed at TUMCREATE. The focus of this simulator lies on the capability to couple with other simulation environments (e.g. Veins, see below) to include the many participants and aspects of modern transport systems. Since the sheer number of vehicles or pedestrians requires lots of computing performance, we focus on the partitioning, the parallelization, and the optimization of our microscopic transport simulator.

Selected publications

  1. Wen Jun Tan, Philipp Andelfinger, Yadong Xu, Wentong Cai, Alois Knoll and David Eckhoff, "Multi-Thread State Update Schemes for Microscopic Traffic Simulation," Proceedings of Proceedings of the 2020 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Virtual Conference, December 2020. Won Best Contributed Applied Paper Award [bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  2. Philipp Andelfinger, Yadong Xu, David Eckhoff, Wentong Cai and Alois Knoll, "Fast-Forwarding Agent States to Accelerate Microscopic Traffic Simulations," Proceedings of ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (SIGSIM PADS 2018), Rome, Italy, May 2018, pp. 113-124. Won Best Paper Award [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  3. Jiajian Xiao, Philipp Andelfinger, David Eckhoff, Wentong Cai and Alois Knoll, "Exploring Execution Schemes for Agent-Based Traffic Simulation on Heterogeneous Hardware," Proceedings of 22nd International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications (DS-RT), Madrid, Spain, October 2018, pp. 243-252. Won Best Paper Award [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  4. Daniel Zehe, Suraj Nair, Alois Knoll and David Eckhoff, "Towards CityMoS: A Coupled City-Scale Mobility Simulation Framework," Proceedings of 5th GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Inter-Vehicle Communication (FG-IVC 2017), Erlangen, Germany, April 2017. [bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]

Autonomous Vehicles in Microscopic Simulation

its

Autonomous Vehicles are set to have a huge impact on transportation systems world wide. But what are the policies required to warrant a safe integration? How can we master the critical phase where human-operated vehicles and autonomous vehicles share the road? We take a deeper look into how microscopic traffic simulation can evaluate and thereby improve autonomous road transport. The main enabler of this research is the BEHAVE (Behaviour Evaluation of Human-drive and Autonomous Vehicles) Project, a collaboration with Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni of UC Berkeley, Prof. Alois Knoll of TUM and our team at TUMCREATE.

Selected publications

  1. Thomas Braud, Jordan Ivanchev, Corvin Deboeser, Alois Knoll, David Eckhoff and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, "AVDM: A hierarchical command-and-control system architecture for cooperative autonomous vehicles in highways scenario using microscopic simulations," Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, vol. 35, April 2021. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, Details]
  2. Jordan Ivanchev, Corvin Deboeser, Thomas Braud, Alois Knoll, David Eckhoff and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, "A Hierarchical State-Machine-Based Framework for Platoon Manoeuvre Descriptions," IEEE Access, August 2021. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, Details]
  3. Ashna Bhatia, Jordan Ivanchev, David Eckhoff and Alois Knoll, "Autonomous Vehicles as Local Traffic Optimizers," Proceedings of 20th International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 2020. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]

Intelligent Transport Systems and the Smart City

its

The various challenges of today's transport systems require innovative solution leveraging latest technology and concepts. Over the last years, we have addressed several problems, ranging from speed recommendations when approaching traffic lights, to improved traffic safety through car-2-car communication, to solutions for electric vehicles. One particular focus lies within the modeling and simulation of smart city and ITS technologoy.

Selected publications

  1. Rainer Stahlmann, Malte Möller, Alexej Brauer, Reinhard German and David Eckhoff, "Exploring GLOSA systems in the field: Technical evaluation and results," Elsevier Computer Communications, vol. 120, pp. 112-124, May 2018. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  2. David Eckhoff, Daniel Zehe, Jordan Ivanchev and Alois Knoll, "Smart City-to-Vehicle -- Measuring, Prediction, Influencing," ATZelektronik worldwide, vol. 12 (2), pp. 60-63, April 2017. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  3. Christoph Sommer, David Eckhoff and Falko Dressler, "IVC in Cities: Signal Attenuation by Buildings and How Parked Cars Can Improve the Situation," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 13 (8), pp. 1733-1745, August 2014. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  4. David Eckhoff, Bastian Halmos and Reinhard German, "Potentials and Limitations of Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory Systems," Proceedings of 5th IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC 2013), Boston, MA, December 2013, pp. 103-110. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]

Privacy and the Digital Citizen

citizen

Smart cities rely on a large number of application areas and technologies to realize complex interactions between citizens, third parties, and city departments. This overwhelming complexity is one reason why holistic privacy protection only rarely enters the picture. A lack of privacy can result in discrimination and social sorting, creating a fundamentally unequal society. To prevent this, we believe that a better understanding of smart cities and their privacy implications is needed. Additionally, more research towards privacy metrics and evaluation of privacy enhancing technologies is demanded.

Selected publications

  1. Bhawani. S. Bhati, Jordan Ivanchev, Iva Bojic, Anwitaman Datta and David Eckhoff, "Utility-Driven k-Anonymization of Public Transport User Data," IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 23608-23623, January 2021. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, Details]
  2. Isabel Wagner and David Eckhoff, "Technical Privacy Metrics: A Systematic Survey," ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), vol. 51 (3), pp. 57:1-57:38, June 2018. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  3. David Eckhoff and Isabel Wagner, "Privacy in the Smart City -- Applications, Technologies, Challenges and Solutions," IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 20 (1), pp. 489-516, 2018. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]

Concluded Research

Privacy in Vehicular Networks (Concluded)

VANET Privacy

Permanent data transmission in vehicular networks pose a risk when it comes to the preservation of privacy of drivers. This research focuses on approaches and their evaluation to protect drivers' privacy. First and foremost the privacy problem has to be understood before it can be solved. Many existing proposals jeopardize traffic safety for negligible privacy improvements. We advocate to use a safety-aware, yet, strong privacy mechanism.

Selected publications

  1. David Eckhoff and Christoph Sommer, "Readjusting the Privacy Goals in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks: A Safety-preserving Solution Using Non-Overlapping Time-slotted Pseudonym Pools," Elsevier Computer Communications, vol. 122, pp. 118-128, June 2018. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  2. David Eckhoff and Christoph Sommer, "Driving for Big Data? Privacy Concerns in Vehicular Networking," IEEE Security & Privacy, vol. 12 (1), pp. 77-79, February 2014. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  3. David Eckhoff, Christoph Sommer, Tobias Gansen, Reinhard German and Falko Dressler, "SlotSwap: Strong and Affordable Location Privacy in Intelligent Transportation Systems," IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 49 (11), pp. 126-133, November 2011. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]

Veins (Concluded)

Veins

Veins, our widespread simulation tool for vehicular networks couples network with traffic simulation and, by employing realistic network models, allows for the detailed investigation of vehicular communication. I am one of the core contributors of the Veins project. I have developed various models for the physical and IEEE 1609/802.11p MAC layers.

Selected publications

  1. Christoph Sommer, David Eckhoff, Alexander Brummer, Dominik S. Buse, Florian Hagenauer, Stefan Joerer and Michele Segata, "Veins -- the open source vehicular network simulation framework," in Recent Advances in Network Simulation, Antonio Virdis and Michael Kirsche (Eds.), Springer, 2019. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  2. David Eckhoff, Alexander Brummer and Christoph Sommer, "On the Impact of Antenna Patterns on VANET Simulation," Proceedings of 8th IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC 2016), Columbus, OH, December 2016, pp. 17-20. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  3. Christoph Sommer, David Eckhoff, Reinhard German and Falko Dressler, "A Computationally Inexpensive Empirical Model of IEEE 802.11p Radio Shadowing in Urban Environments," Proceedings of 8th IEEE/IFIP Conference on Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services (WONS 2011), Bardonecchia, Italy, January 2011, pp. 84-90. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]

SkyNet (concluded)

SkyNet

Flying Ad-Hoc Network (FANET) for exchanging information amongst foot-launched gliders. In this projec,t we tackled the challenges of modelling the communication channel for paraglider-to-paraglider communication. The research in this project has contributed to the development of the SkyTraxx Variometer.

Selected publications

  1. Juergen Eckert, David Eckhoff and Reinhard German, "A Deterministic Radio Propagation Model for Inter-Paraglider Communication," Proceedings of 11th IEEE/IFIP Conference on Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services (WONS 2014), Obergurgl, Austria, April 2014, pp. 138-142. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]
  2. Juergen Eckert, David Eckhoff and Reinhard German, "Flying Ad-Hoc Network Communication for Detecting Thermals: Feasibility and Insights," Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Innovative Computing Technology (INTECH 2013), London, United Kingdom, August 2013, pp. 333-338. [doi DOI, bib BibTeX, pdf PDF and Details]