This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal.
Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
Future Intelligent and Secure
Vehicular Network Toward
6G: Machine-Learning
Approaches
By F ENGXIAO TANG , Member IEEE, Y UICHI K AWAMOTO , Member IEEE,
N EI K ATO , Fellow IEEE, AND J IAJIA L IU , Senior Member IEEE
ABSTRACT | As a powerful tool, the vehicular network has been
built to connect human communication and transportation
around the world for many years to come. However, with the
rapid growth of vehicles, the vehicular network becomes het-
erogeneous, dynamic, and large scaled, which makes it difficult
to meet the strict requirements, such as ultralow latency, high
reliability, high security, and massive connections of the next-
generation (6G) network. Recently, machine learning (ML) has
emerged as a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) technique
to make both the vehicle and wireless communication highly
efficient and adaptable. Naturally, employing ML into vehicular
communication and network becomes a hot topic and is being
widely studied in both academia and industry, paving the way
for the future intelligentization in 6G vehicular networks. In this
article, we provide a survey on various ML techniques applied
to communication, networking, and security parts in vehicular
networks and envision the ways of enabling AI toward a future
6G vehicular network, including the evolution of intelligent
radio (IR), network intelligentization, and self-learning with
proactive exploration.
Manuscript received June 12, 2019; revised October 14, 2019; accepted
November 17, 2019. (Corresponding author: Fengxiao Tang.)
F. Tang, Y. Kawamoto, and N. Kato are with the Graduate School of
Information Sciences (GSIS), Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan (e-mail:
fengxiao.tang@it.is.tohoku.ac.jp; youpsan@it.is.tohoku.ac.jp;
kato@it.is.tohoku.ac.jp).
J. Liu is with the School of Cyberspace Security, Northwestern Polytechnical
University, Xi’an 710072, China (e-mail: liujiajia@nwpu.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JPROC.2019.2954595
0018-9219 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
KEYWORDS | 6G; deep learning; intelligent radio (IR); intelli-
gentization; Internet of Vehicles (IoV); machine learning (ML);
resource allocation; routing; security; space–air–ground; traffic
control; vehicle-to-everything (V2X); vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V);
vehicular network.
I. I N T R O D U C T I O N
After the fifth-generation (5G) network is competitively
deployed around the world, the artificial intelligence (AI)-
enabled next-generation (6G) network will be proposed
for future evolution of network intelligentization [1].
Recently, the new generation vehicle-related works, such
as autonomous driving, cooperative vehicular networks,
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) [2], vehicular ad hoc networks
(VANETs), air-to-ground (A2G) networks, and space–air–
ground integrated networks (SAGINs) [3], have attracted
considerable attention from researchers in both academia
and industry [4]. The AI-enabled future vehicular network
that benefited from those vehicle-related works paves the
way for future intelligent transport system (ITS) and intel-
ligent vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications in 6G.
The 6G vehicular network aims to develop a highly
dynamic and intelligent system, which enables the net-
works to change the environment to satisfy various appli-
cation requirements and service types, such as enhanced
mobile broadband (eMBB), ultrareliable and low-latency
communications (uRLLCs), and massive machine-type
communications (mMTC) adaptively. As shown in Fig. 1,
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Fig. 1. Architecture of the heterogeneous vehicular network in 6G.
there are various evolutions that should be addressed.
Different from conventional vehicular networks that
mainly focus on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-
infrastructure (V2I) communications, the 6G vehicular
network has been constructed with better heterogeneous
structure with space–air–ground even underwater vehi-
cles. Furthermore, the 6G AI-enabled vehicular networks
can have a positive impact not only on transportation but
also on the interaction between humans and the world,
such as smart grid, smart living, and human socializa-
tion. The dynamic adaptivity-enabling self-optimization,
the secure communication, as well as the rapid response
capability improving transmission quality of service (QoS)
and reducing end-to-end delay are essential to such large-
scaled 6G vehicular networks [5]. To achieve the goal,
some advanced techniques, such as network function
virtualization (NFV), cognitive radio (CR), and reactive
vehicular network control, are proposed in 5G. However,
the new key performance indicators (KPIs) of the 6G net-
work require further evolution to network intelligentiza-
tion, intelligent radio (IR), and self-learning with proactive
exploration.
Machine learning (ML) is the promising AI technology,
which brings intelligence to various widely used systems
and has been proven to be efficient in various areas,
such as pattern recognition [6], natural language process-
ing [7], and autonomous driving and game AI [8]. The
current ML technologies develop efficient approaches to
data recognition and fast correlation recovering and can be
potential tools to satisfy the high requirements of dynamic
adaptation, secure communication, and rapid response
toward the 6G intelligent vehicular network. To the best of
the authors’ knowledge, the potential applications for ML
in vehicular networks include fast channel equalization,
adaptive resource allocation, intelligent traffic control,
mobile computing, intrusion detection, and so forth.
In this article, we give a comprehensive survey of the
employment of ML technologies for vehicular network
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intelligentization and propose some open issues of evolv-
ing the conventional vehicular network toward 6G from
CR to IR, from virtualization to intelligentization, and
from reactive to proactive. We organize the ML-enabled
evolution for vehicular networks in terms of communica-
tion, networking, and security aspects. In the first part,
we illustrate the current state and emerging challenges
of vehicular networks. Then, the potential ML-technology-
based intelligent solutions for 6G vehicular networks
are surveyed individually for conquering the mentioned
challenges in communication, networking, and security
aspects. To guide the possible research directions, we high-
light some open research issues and challenges in the final
part. The summarized flow of this article is shown in Fig. 2.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows.
Section II surveys the state and challenges of communi-
cation, networking, and security in vehicular networks.
In Section III, we describe the applications of ML in the
vehicular network for solving communication challenges.
Then, we investigate the ML-based approaches and pro-
pose open research issues for intelligent vehicular network-
ing of resource allocation and traffic control in Section IV.
The survey and the open issue of ML for vehicular network
security are discussed in Section V. Finally, in Section VI,
this article is concluded.
II. S T A T E A N D C H A L L E N G E S I N
VEHICULAR NETWORK
In this section, we survey the technologies of a vehicu-
lar network in terms of communication, networking, and
secure aspects. The current state and challenges of the
vehicular communication and networking depending on
different techniques and research directions are investi-
gated, respectively.
A. Challenges of Vehicular Communication
To support the vehicular network, the communication
technology between vehicles, as well as between vehicles
and other equipments, has been widely researched for
many years. In the early stage, typical communication
techniques with unlicensed spectrums, such as Bluetooth,
Wi-Fi [9], and WiMax, were exploited to support the
vehicular communications extended from cellular net-
works. However, the existing techniques do not satisfy
the distinctive requirements, such as high flexibility and
sensitive collision avoidance ability of vehicular networks.
To solve the problem, the unique vehicular communi-
cation technique, dedicated short-range communications
(DSRC) for V2V and V2I communications, was proposed
in 1999 and quickly became the most commonly used
wireless communication technique for short-range connec-
tion in a vehicular network. Besides, the long-term evolu-
tion (LTE) is the primary broadband technology based on
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) [10]
and was developed by 3GPP to increase the capacity and
speed of an old generation wireless network. Recently,
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Fig. 2. Perspectives of ML in a vehicular network that we focus on in this article.
3GPP extended the LTE standard to the so-called LTE-V
for supporting heterogeneous vehicular network for all
V2V, V2I, vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P), and vehicle-to-
network (V2N) communications [11]. To support the high-
frequency bandwidth of the new generation network (i.e.,
5G and beyond), new radio allocation and access tech-
niques, such as multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO),
time division duplex (TDD), OFDM, CR, beamforming,
and nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA), have been
widely researched, which is also being used in the new
version DSRC, LTE-V, and so forth. However, to satisfy
the high flexibility and rapid response capability of future
6G vehicular networks, there are still many challenges in
those mentioned techniques. In the remaining part of this
section, we illustrate the challenges following the radio
access flow.
1) Multiradio Access Challenge: In the dynamic envi-
ronment, the rapid and precise channel division
and multiple-radio access are essential for the high-
mobility users. Recently, the time-, power-, and
frequency-based channel division technology, such
as TDD, OFDM, and NOMA, have been widely
researched for the new generation dynamic network
and supported by WiFi, DSRC, WiMax, and LTE in
a vehicular network. Furthermore, the space-based
multiplexing of MIMO and massive MIMO to enable
multiple antennas has been considered as the core
technique in a high-density vehicular network in 5G.
The mentioned multiradio access technologies pro-
vide intelligent multiple access to a future vehicu-
lar network and are mainly based on the channel
state information (CSI), which can be predicted with
probed feedback (e.g., pilot) from environment [12].
In a conventional wireless communication, the chan-
nel estimation and signal detection are widely used
to improve the spectrum utilization, in which the
channel estimation and signal detection accuracy
depend primarily on the stability of the transmitter
and the receiver [13]. However, because of the high
mobility of vehicles, the high Doppler spread causes
extremely fast channel fading and hinders the accu-
racy of channel estimation. The simple CSI estimation
based only on linear models is not fulfilled in the high-
dynamic environment. Moreover, conventional meth-
ods first estimate the CSI and then recover the signal
of the transmitter-based estimated channel, which is
time consuming and causes unexpected latency [14],
[15]. In summary, the conventional multiradio access
methods cannot satisfy the ultralow-delay and high-
throughput requirement of future vehicular commu-
nication. How to intelligently schedule the multira-
dio access for dynamic vehicular communication is a
big challenge.
2) Radio Configuration Challenge: The conventional com-
munication system considers the radio configuration
as different blocks, such as decoding space–time
codes, channel equalization, and signal modulation.
The communication blocks are sliced with isolated
communication functions, and the radio is configured
step-by-step as a functions chain [16]. For example,
the channel resource allocation algorithm should be
designed depending on the different modulation of
signals. Such a kind of radio configuration is time con-
suming and not feasible for the high-dynamic vehic-
ular network. How to make the radio configuration
in a more feasible way and to intelligently allocate
resources with low latency should be an emerging
topic in the future 6G vehicular network.
3) Beamforming Challenge: In the future vehicular com-
munication, the mmWave will be widely used. Both
the beamforming and massive MIMO technologies for
specific high-dynamic vehicular communications are
desired. As shown in Fig. 3, the mutative vehicular
location and high overhead of frequent beam training
are the critical drawback to develop the mmWave
in high-mobility vehicular communication systems.
Recent works [17], [18] show that the conventional
beamforming methods provide high overload for the
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Fig. 3. Illustration of dynamic beamforming in vehicular network.
mmWave in the dynamic vehicular communication
and are not intelligent to adapt to frequently changing
vehicular scenario. In order to make the mmWave and
the corresponding beamforming strategy intelligent,
the novel intelligent ML technology might be a poten-
tial solution.
B. Challenges of Vehicular Networking
The future intelligent 6G vehicular network can provide
communications from V2X, which includes heterogeneous
communications of V2V, V2I, V2P, and V2N. The feasible
and heterogeneous structure of a vehicular network leads
to new requirements for the networking algorithms. In this
section, we introduce the challenges in intelligent vehic-
ular networking from resource allocation and network
traffic control aspects.
1) Network Resource Allocation: The wireless network
resources, such as channels, power level, computing ability,
and time slots, are unevenly distributed in networks, and
the requirements of users in the network are different.
How to allocate suitable resources in a wireless network
is a classical problem in the wireless network [19]. Many
resource allocation algorithms based on the greedy algo-
rithm, auction theory, and game theory are widely pro-
posed to deal with the resource allocation problem. Dif-
ferent from conventional wireless networks, the vehicular
network involves unique characteristics of high-mobility
nodes, heterogeneous structure, and high QoS require-
ments from passengers. Conventional static resource allo-
cation methods are insufficient for such complex vehicular
networks. For example, a dynamic radio resource alloca-
tion problem in a vehicular network is shown in Fig. 4.
Considering that the vehicles are dynamically moving,
the radio resources in power, spectrum, and time domain
should be jointly considered to fit the mutative scenario.
To summarize, there are three main challenges for
employing a resource allocation algorithm in the vehicular
networks:
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1) Rapid Response: In the high-dynamic vehicular net-
work, the mobility of vehicles causes quick handoffs
of wireless links, and the immediate resource alloca-
tion when environment is changing is critical.
2) Accurate Environment Modeling: For various kinds
of criteria and requirements in the heterogeneous
vehicular network, creating an accurate mathematical
model to measure all resources in the complex envi-
ronment is challenging.
3) Self-Adaptivity: The environment is spatial–temporal
changing in the mutative vehicular network, and to
adjust to the changing topology and requirements,
the resource allocation scheme should be evolved
with proactive exploration and self-adaptive ability.
To solve the mentioned challenges, some dynamic
resource allocation algorithms have been proposed. For
example, Yang et al. [20] tried to address the challenge
of accurate environment modeling in a heterogeneous
vehicular network and employed the graph coloring theory
to model the joint resources’ allocation problem in cellular-
VANET heterogeneous networks. However, the proposal
is time-consuming and not self-adaptive for the dynamic
environment. Misra et al. [21] addressed the self-adaptivity
challenge by using learning automata (LA) to explore the
radio resource reusability and power consumption level
and adaptively assigned radio resources to nodes with the
corresponding requirement. Although the proposal is adap-
tive, both the signaling overhead and the response speed
are not suitable for the high-dynamic vehicular network.
After this, various methods, such as game theory [22]
and Markov chain [23], have been proposed to address
the dynamic resource allocation problems in vehicular
networks. However, those conventional methods are still
not intelligent enough to deal with all three challenges.
The intelligent ML technologies have emerged recently
and are considered to be the potential solution to address
the challenges in the future vehicular network, which are
introduced in detail in Section IV-A.
2) Network Traffic Control: The network traffic con-
trol, including network routing, congestion avoidance, and
traffic offloading, has been widely researched in conven-
tional wireless networks. In a vehicular network, con-
sidering the dynamics of network topology, the traffic
control strategy becomes more complex. Instead of con-
ventional routing protocols such as open shortest path
first (OSPF), intermediate system-to-intermediate system
(IS-IS), and routing information protocol (RIP), the loca-
tion information and network topology emerge as impor-
tant parameters involved in the routing protocol design
for the high-dynamic vehicular network. By involving
the location and topology information, some classical
routing protocols, such as destination-sequenced distance-
vector routing (DSDV) [24], stability-based adaptive
routing (SSA) [25], dynamic source routing (DSR) [26],
proactive source routing (PSR) [27], and optimized link-
state routing protocol (OLSR) [28] for dynamic network,
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Fig. 4. Illustration of dynamic radio resource allocation in vehicular network.
have been proposed. However, those routing algorithms
still do not satisfy the high requirements, such as ultralow
delay (≤10 ms), high capacity (≥100 Mb/s), and high
security of future vehicular networks. To achieve the intel-
ligent networking and high-quality end-to-end communi-
cation in a future vehicular network, we summarize three
main challenges of network traffic control as follows.
1) Future State Prediction: To adjust to the sharply chang-
ing environment, the traffic control based on the
future state (e.g., network topology, network traffic
load, and radio conditions) prediction using historical
information is critical in the future intelligent vehicu-
lar network.
2) Correlation Recovering: The complete global informa-
tion of the heterogeneous vehicular network is hard
to be collected in real time, and recovering informa-
tion from incomplete information in the distributed
system is essential in the future large-scale vehicular
networks.
3) Proactive Exploration and Self-learning: In the high-
dynamic vehicular network, frequently changing the
traffic control strategy with human interface is
time-consuming and consumptive, and an emerging
research direction of enabling intelligence for future
6G vehicular network is to make the traffic control
system proactively exploring the changing environ-
ment and self-evaluation from explored information.
C. Challenges of Network Security
The cyber-physical security is the standard research
topic in the cyber system, which is also a serious issue in
vehicular networks. The attack and malicious behaviors of
vehicular users cause serious consequences that not only
affect the network but also threaten personnel safety in
vehicles, and the vehicular networks require more strict
demands in ML-based security algorithms. The specific
constraints of the vehicular network can be introduced as
follows.
1) High Mobility: The most important characteristic of
the vehicular network is the high dynamics of vehicle
nodes. Links between vehicles are frequently broken
and it is hard to deploy the conventional reputation-
based secure system [29]. The network traffic sharply
waving with topology changing affects both secure
packets routing and intrusion detection [30]. Further-
more, the high mobility leads to the unpredictable
movement of nodes, which hinders the real-time
transmission of secure information.
2) Heterogeneous Structure: The vehicular network is
constructed with various devices and technologies,
which is embedded with different resource capacity.
How to balance the various resources between nodes
to ensure the security strategy emerges as a big
challenge. For example, in the power, computation-,
and storage-constrained vehicular network, how
to maximize secure applicability can be treated
as a fuzzy game and is hard to be solved
optimally [31].
3) Large Scaled: The scale of the vehicular network
increases fast. Millions of vehicles are expected to
be connected to the big network in 2020 [32].
However, no existing global authority and standard
provide security for the big network. Furthermore,
the increasing scale of the network increases both
the computation and communication overhead of the
security algorithm, which increases both response
latency and detection error rate.
4) Privacy Requirement: There is always a tradeoff
between security and privacy in the cyber sys-
tem [33]. In a vehicular network, the authorization
and information accuracy provided by vehicle drivers
directly affect the network security. Without the guar-
antee of information accuracy, the secure algorithm
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Table 1 Applications of ML in Vehicular Communication
consumes many more resources to detect and distin-
guish error and anomaly from fuzzy information [34].
5) Real-Time Requirement: Different from conventional
networks, the vehicular network requires immediate
decisions to deal with the real-time situation, such
as help information broadcast, accident avoidance,
and quick rescue. The real-time requirement of the
vehicular network desires low-delay transmission as
well as fast attack prevention mechanisms [35].
In order to conquer the abovementioned challenges,
a series of methods have been proposed over the years.
Jamming and eavesdropping are two primary attacks in
networks, and the vehicular public key infrastructure (PKI)
and elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA)
have been proposed to be the two main security architec-
tures to ensure the confidential communication from mali-
cious attacks [36], [37]. However, the malicious attacks
include the sybil attack, the denial-of-service (DoS) attack,
the blackhole attack, the wormhole attack, the bogus infor-
mation attack, and the replay attack that can forge identity,
transmit spam messages, and hijack normal nodes to break
through the PKI and ECDSA security [38]. To detect and
prevent the intrusions, many malicious behavior detection
methods have been proposed [39]–[42]. Some researchers
propose that leakages and intrusions can be traced with
data mining methods from dynamic network traffic pat-
terns [43], [44]. The intrusion detection algorithms for
conventional networks are mostly achieved by defining
the normal state from static training data. In the highly
dynamic vehicular network, the existing training data are
not efficient for novel intrusions in the changing envi-
ronment. Then, Kurosawa et al. [45], [46] proposed a
dynamic attack detection algorithm for AODV routing-
based MANET. The conventional data mining technologies,
such as association rules, autoregressive, and classifica-
tion, are widely used in the abovementioned works for
intrusion detection. Recently, ML has proposed to be the
promising data mining tool for improving both the data
encryption and intrusion detection performance in vehicu-
lar networks.
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III. M L I N V E H I C U L A R
C O M M U N I C AT I O N S
Network intelligentization is the primary goal of the future
vehicular network in 6G. As powerful intelligence enabling
technology, ML is recently being utilized in the wireless
system to address the challenges and paves the way for
future vehicular communications. In this section, we sur-
vey the applications of ML in vehicular communications to
conquer the challenges listed in Section II-B and propose
the potential directions of using ML for future IR in 6G
vehicular networks. The used ML structures and targeting
tasks are listed in Table 1.
A. ML for Intelligent Multiradio Access
Channel estimation-based configurations of multiradio
access, such as TDD, OFDM, NOMA, and MIMO, are widely
researched in wireless networks. However, as we men-
tioned in Section II-B, due to the high dynamics of the
vehicular network, conventional configuration methods for
multiradio access do not easily meet the strict requirement
of the vehicular network. Recently, ML has been widely
researched to enable intelligence in those multiradio access
techniques.
Chen et al. [53] considered using supervised
multilayer perceptron (MLP) to equalize channels by
intelligently reconstructing the transmitted symbols.
Sebald and Bucklew [47] proposed a support vector
machine (SVM)-based nonlinear equalization algorithm
in the wireless communication where the temporal
correlation exists in the collected intersymbol interference
(ISI) data. However, those ML-based algorithms consider
only single transmission without considering the space
diversity in a multipath transmission environment.
Sánchez-Fernández et al. [48] proposed the SVM-based
multiregression algorithm for channel estimation in an
MIMO environment. In the proposal, the SVM-based
algorithm can achieve fast convergence and shows
higher estimation accuracy than classical minimum
mean-square-error (mmse) or maximum-likelihood-based
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
channel estimation algorithms [13], [74]. Innovated from
SVM, Feng and Chang [49] proposed an ML algorithm
based on parallel hierarchical SVM (H-SVM) to estimate
the channel noise of wireless network. However, the
SVM-based algorithms depend on two assumptions: no ISI
is presented in the channel model, and the channel fading
is slow. However, because of the high dynamic in the
vehicular network, both the ISI and the fast fading should
be considered. Besides SVM, Prasad and Murthy [56] and
Prasad et al. [57] proposed the sparse Bayesian learning
(SBL)-based channel estimation algorithm for considering
the OFDM with sparse nonzero components in the channel
model. Considering the sparse feature, Wen et al. [55]
found that the link signal in the massive MIMO wireless
network is approximately sparse and the corresponding
channel condition can be accurately estimated by
using Bayesian learning. Huang et al. [75] compared
the sparse recovery algorithms for channel estimation
considering the similar sparse channel model of OFDM in
an underwater environment. As the promising multiradio
access technology, the sparse code multiple access (SCMA)
developed from NOMA has been widely researched to
improve spectral efficiency. Wang et al. [59] proposed
an SBL-based user detection and channel estimation
for SCMA uplink systems to reduce the requirement of
pilot overhead. Also, considering SCMA, Kim et al. [67]
proposed a deep-learning method using the deep belief
network (DBN) to improve the NOMA efficiency in density
environment. With powerful deep learning, training
the decoding can be done in a single shot to improve
the computational time, and the changing channel can
be efficiently learned to minimize the transmission bit
error rate (BER).
B. ML for IR Configuration
As per the challenges mentioned in Section II-B,
the blocked communication functions make the radio con-
figuration slow and stiff. In order to address the challenges,
the researchers proposed some ML-based adaptive con-
figuration algorithms to jointly optimize communication
function cross blocks. For example, Daniels et al. [60]
proposed a K -nearest neighbor (KNN)-based supervised
learning strategy for adaptive OFDM configuration, includ-
ing modulation, convolutional coding, and bit interleaving.
In this proposal, the approximated channel model, such
as ideal interleaving and wireless channel distribution,
is not needed, and the adaptive OFDM configuration can
be made in one slot instead of the step-by-step calculation.
Rico-Alvario and Heath [138] further extended the ML-
based adaptive OFDM configuration to multiuser access
scenario. This article also considers using as few assump-
tions as possible on the mathematical model of the physical
layer so that channel approximations can be avoided [60].
The deep learning is proposed to be a better solution for
dealing with the challenges in OFDM [61]. Ye et al. [14]
considered all physical models as the black box and pro-
posed a DBN-based deep-learning algorithm for channel
estimation and signal detection. At the IEEE 86th Vehicular
Technology Conference in 2017, they presented a prelimi-
nary result, which showed that the deep learning achieves
outstanding performance for learning the channel states
in a complex environment [62]. Then, Felix et al. [63]
presented the deep learning that can be employed as an
autoencoder for OFDM and can adaptively configure the
channel without the conventional signal processing block.
Gui et al. [68] modeled the conventional user activity/data
detection as an unknown nonlinear mapping problem and
correspondingly proposed an approximation algorithm to
solve it by using long short-term memory (LSTM) to model
the spatial–temporal relationship between the input sig-
nals and the sharply changing channel conditions. Besides
the supervised deep-learning algorithms, reinforcement
learning is also being studied for radio configuration. Con-
sidering the jamming attacks, Xiao et al. [70] proposed an
intelligent scheme using the deep reinforcement learning
(DRL) to adaptively allocate power in NOMA without
being aware of the jamming and radio channel parameters.
C. ML for Adaptive Tracking and Beamforming
As we mentioned in the intelligent multiradio access
part, the environment parameters, as well as channel
and interference model, are hard to be modeled with
certain formulas. The ML is a powerful tool to treat
the unknown model as a black box and extract the fea-
tures and build the connection between the input data
and the output data. Gaudes et al. [51] constructed the
minimum-variance distortionless response (MVDR) beam-
former designed as a complex-valued constrained opti-
mization problem. With the supervised SVM, the valued
constrained optimization achieves quick convergence, and
the performance is better than in the conventional mmse-
based algorithms. Ramon et al. [52] also reformulated
the configuration of beamforming as a variance mini-
mization problem. By incorporating additional inequality
constraints penalizing sidelobe levels and considering the
certain error in the desired signal direction, the variance
minimization problem becomes nonlinear and is creatively
solved with the proposed SVM learning algorithm. How-
ever, the considered environment is still ideal, such as the
specific Gaussian noise model that is assumed. Further-
more, those works do not consider the high dynamics of
vehicular communications.
For high-dynamic vehicular communications, extra
information, such as out-of-band measurements and vehi-
cles’ positions, restrains the best beam pair selection time.
Klautau et al. [18] proposed a deep-learning-based beam
selection algorithm in a high-dynamic 5G MIMO-enabled
V2I network. In this article, various ML algorithms are
studied in both supervised-learning-based feature classi-
fication and reinforcement-learning-based action making
process for beamforming. The results demonstrate that
the deep-learning structure outperforms shallow ones in
terms of accuracy for classification and root-mean-squared
error (RMSE) for regression. Then, Alkhateeb et al. [65]
further considered that the training overhead should
be reasonable, and a novel deep-learning coordinated
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
beamforming algorithm is proposed for the specific high-
mobility mmWave system. The results show that the
intelligent deep-learning-based beamforming can achieve
reliable coverage, low latency, and negligible training
overhead in the high-mobility mmWave system. Besides,
Asadi et al. [66] proposed that the coarse user location can
be involved in dynamic beam selection, and with the online
ML algorithm for sensing the changing environment, both
the network performance and communication stability can
be improved under guaranteed convergence.
D. Open Issue: From CR to IR
To enable the intelligence to the dynamic communica-
tion system, the concept of CR is proposed as the adaption
tool to be aware of and learn from the environment. How-
ever, due to the highly heterogeneous and dynamic vehic-
ular network, the degrees of freedom of a wireless system
increase the complexity of the environment. In such a com-
plicated case, several parameters and policies in isolated
blocks need to be adjusted simultaneously (e.g., transmit
power, coding scheme, modulation scheme, sensing algo-
rithm, communication protocol, and sensing policy), and
no simple formula may be able to determine these setup
parameters simultaneously [76]. Recently, the concept of
IR has been proposed as one of the core techniques in 6G,
which is an intelligentized extension of CR-enabling deep
neural networks (NNs) for replacing blocked functions
in the communication system. From CR to IR, there is
still a long distance, and the first step is to adapt CR
to the complex environment and perform intelligent CR
configuration for simultaneous multiple actions.
To achieve this goal, many ML-based CR configura-
tion algorithms are proposed. The spectrum sensing is
the basic of the CR system. Gong et al. [58] proposed
a Bayesian-learning-based adaptive algorithm to set up
the cooperation relationship between the local nodes.
In this approach, adaptive learning is used to find the
optimal decision threshold, which can be treated as the
classification problem with supervised learning. However,
the Gaussian noise model is assumed in this article, which
may not satisfy the real complex wireless system in a high-
dynamic vehicular network. To consider the problem to
be more real, Galindo-Serrano and Giupponi [71] con-
sidered the channel and interference as a black box and
modeled the channel adaption and environment changing
as the Markov decision process (MDP). In this article,
the Q-learning method is proposed to learn the environ-
ment and solve the MDP problem in an online manner.
By further considering the transfer policy in MDP that
is unknown, Choi and Hossain [72] modeled the CR
system as a hidden Markov model (HMM) and proposed
an expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate
the primary user parameters in the learning part of the
cognition cycle. Assra et al. [77] further exploited the
EM algorithm to cooperatively detect the spectrum in
multiantenna CR networks. Besides reinforcement learn-
ing, the supervised learning algorithms are widely used
8 P ROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE
in CR for task classification, such as SVM for signal
classification [50] and MLP for transmission parameter
optimization [54]. The abovementioned works all focus
on using supervised or reinforcement learning to opti-
mize one aspect of CR. Thilina et al. [73] jointly con-
sidered the supervised and unsupervised learning in the
CR system. In this article, the unsupervised learning of
K -means algorithm is used to cluster the channel features,
and the supervised learning of SVM and KNN is used to
approximate the relation function between the channel
vectors and to separate hyperplanes. Recently, the deep
structure of ML (i.e., deep learning) has been proven to be
a powerful tool in various areas including being employed
in the CR configuration. Zhu et al. [69] employed the
deep Q-learning for solving the HMM-based transmission
scheduling of CR. Mendis et al. [64] proposed a supervised
DBN NN for automated modulation classification for CR.
Some other works about using NNs and HMM to solve
the CR problem are surveyed in [78]. However, all those
CR algorithms employ the cutting-edge ML techniques for
specific function optimization, which is hard to integrate
the interactions between various hardware components in
the heterogeneous vehicular network. The CR embedded
with ML based on the virtualized network to achieve IR
might be considered as a future research direction.
IV. A P P L I C A T I O N S O F M L I N
VEHICULAR NETWORKING
Toward the future vehicular networking in 6G, the ML
algorithms are widely used for network radio resource
assignment, transmit power control, transmit scheduling,
dynamic routing, traffic offloading, computing assistant,
and so on. In this section, we survey the related works,
especially for the proposals of exploiting ML for vehicular
networking that have been presented recently.
A. ML in Resource Allocation
Different from the conventional wireless network where
resource allocations are widely researched, the vehicular
network has special constraints and requirements for the
intelligent resource allocation strategies. For conquering
the three main requirements of resource allocation in the
vehicular network as mentioned in Section II-B1, the intel-
ligent ML-based resource allocation has attracted much
attention recently.
A novel reinforcement-learning-based dynamic chan-
nel assignment algorithm was proposed by Nie and
Haykin [79] to solve the radio resource allocation problem
in a mobile communication environment. Instead of the
conventional radio resource allocation algorithm which
mainly depends on a single criterion such as channel inter-
ference or traffic conditions, the authors presented that
the efficient radio allocation should consider various condi-
tions, including homogeneous and inhomogeneous traffic
distributions, time-varying traffic patterns, and channel
failures. The joint optimization for such multiple tasks is
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Fig. 5. Q-learning-based dynamic radio resource allocation.
hard to be solved as the problem in most cases is NP-hard.
Therefore, the authors considered the complex resource
allocation problem as a large-scale constrained dynamic
optimization problem and used a real-time reinforcement
learning (Q-learning) to solve it. The intelligent decision
strategy is shown in Fig. 5. The resource allocation is
based on the reflection (i.e., reward) from the changing
environment, which is adaptive for the high-dynamic envi-
ronment. Due to the limitation of computation and depth
of the ML algorithm, the ML-based resource allocation
methods in dynamic networks do not attract much atten-
tion until the powerful deep-learning methods emerge.
He et al. [80], [81] proposed employing DRL to solve
the joint resource allocation problem in next-generation
vehicular networks. In this article, the authors considered
the complex environment and resources, including not
only radio but also networking, caching, and computing
resources. Depending on the function virtualization and
centralization ability of software-defined network (SDN)
and information-centric networking (ICN), the multiple
global task-targeted joint resource allocation is enabled.
In such a system, the authors formulate the resource allo-
cation strategy in this framework as a multiple tasks’ joint
optimization problem that is similar to the large-scale con-
strained dynamic optimization problem mentioned in [79],
and a corresponding DRL-based (deep Q-learning) alloca-
tion algorithm is proposed. Besides DRL, supervised deep
learning is also being used in resource allocation in a
high-dynamic network. The high mobility of the vehicu-
lar network causes dynamic channel interface and bursty
traffic patterns. In [82], the deep convolutional NN (CNN)
was proposed to predict the bursty traffic and intelligently
assign the channel to links adaptively. In the proposal,
two deep-learning structures of CNN and DBN were jointly
used. The first CNN structure is used to extract the features
of traffic patterns online and train the system to predict the
future traffic load levels of nodes. Based on the predicted
load level, the DBN structure, which is offline pretrained
with the existing data set collected from a static channel
allocation algorithm, is employed to intelligently allocate
channels after the CNN part. The enhanced algorithms
with SDN and dynamic online learning were introduced
in [83] and [84]. With the deep-learning algorithm, intel-
ligent channel allocation based on future traffic prediction
can avoid potential congestion. Furthermore, the super-
vised channel assignment algorithm integrates the channel
negotiations into one slot, accelerates the channel allo-
cation process, and reduces signaling overhead. Besides
ground vehicles, Kawamoto et al. [85] studied the resource
allocation problem between high-dynamic unmanned aer-
ial vehicles (UAVs) where both the propagation environ-
ment and the communication demand are dynamically
changing. The simulation results in the study show that the
proposed Q-learning-based intelligent resource allocation
of UAVs can adapt to various propagation environments.
Xiao et al. [86] considered the power allocation in a coop-
erative sensing scenario in a vehicular network and pro-
posed a Q-learning-based mobile crowdsensing strategy
for efficient power control. Atallah et al. [139] proposed
an energy-efficient radio resource scheduling algorithm for
V2I in vehicular networks. Also considering the vehicular
network, for optimal channel and power selection with-
out requiring/waiting for global information, a DRL-based
algorithm for V2V was proposed in [87].
To summarize, the ML methods have been recently
(the last two years) widely exploited in dynamic resource
allocation in vehicular networks. Both supervised learning
and reinforcement learning are studied for fast making
decision and response, state estimation and modeling,
and recovering and self-adaption of resource allocation
in high-dynamic vehicular networks. We foresee that the
mentioned directions may attract more attention in the
next few years.
B. ML in Network Traffic Control
The mobility of vehicles significantly affects both the
communication connectivity and the routing scheduling in
the vehicular network. Recently, ML has been employed to
improve mobility prediction, efficient connection, dynamic
routing, quick handoff, and potential congestion avoidance
for vehicular network intelligent traffic control. We sum-
marize the proposals in Table 2 and review those proposals
by classifying them depending on targeting different chal-
lenges.
1) Intelligent Prediction-Based Network Traffic Control:
The built connections and routing paths may frequently be
broken due to the high vehicle mobility. To establish and
maintain end-to-end connections in vehicular networks,
involving the vehicle mobility and vehicular traffic change
trends in the dynamic network routing problem in a
vehicular network, is an essential solution. The function
approximation ability makes the supervised ML efficient
for information recovering in spectrum and space domain,
and state prediction in the time domain. To predict the
vehicles’ motion and to schedule network traffic, two
kinds of ML-based prediction approaches are proposed:
one is the historical coordinates and velocity-based vehi-
cles’ location prediction, and the other is the historical
vehicles’ flow-based future traffic load prediction. For the
first approach, the time-series-based ML algorithms, such
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Table 2 Applications of Using ML for Vehicular Network Traffic Control
as an artificial neural network (ANN) and HMM, are used
for vehicle motion and location prediction [111], [112].
Besides the vehicle-motion-based location prediction only
for single/small amount of vehicles, the traffic flow
prediction-based network traffic control methods show a
significant performance improvement in the complex and
large-scale vehicle network. The spatial–temporal feature
extraction-enabled ML, such as DBN, recurrent neural
network (RNN), stacked autoencoders (SAEs), and CNN,
is widely used in [88]–[90].
The ML-based vehicle mobility prediction points toward
the possible direction of the network traffic control based
on time-series estimation. Some researchers propose that
the time-series models can be used in the Internet traffic
flow forecasting, which reflects both the dynamic topology
change in the spatial domain and the network resource
change in the temporal domain [113]. With the network
traffic flow prediction, the advance traffic control actions
can be made to offload traffic and avoid potential con-
gestion based on the predicted traffic flow. As the traffic
flows in the vehicular network are sophisticated and large
scaled, ML methods with deep structure, such as ANN,
RNN, and CNN, which are capable of high-dimensional
data, have been employed in the recent works [91]–[94],
[103], [114]. Besides the simple V2V and V2I scenarios,
by considering the advanced vehicular network that is het-
erogeneous with various devices and equipment, the deep-
learning-based network traffic control for complex vehicu-
lar environment, including high-speed UAVs, long-distance
roadside unit (RSU), and satellite communication, is fur-
ther researched in [95] and [96].
Besides supervised learning, reinforcement learning
is proposed to deal with the network traffic prediction
and adaptive strategy decision process by learning from
continued actions and feedback. With reinforcement
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learning, the traffic control system can get rid of labeled
data and efficiently integrate the state prediction and
action selection into one step. In the related works,
the typical learning algorithms, such as Q-learning,
collaborative reinforcement learning (CRL), and combined
Q-learning and transfer learning [104]–[106], are
employed. Another application of reinforcement learning
in the vehicular networks is to predict the traffic
load of different blocks and automatically offload the
network traffic to balance overheads between the
blocks [101]. In the related works, the unsupervised-
learning is exploited for the clustering of the blocks in
the vehicular network [107]. The unsupervised-learning-
based clustering for vehicles, packets, and infrastructures
is widely researched in conventional networks. However,
due to the distinctive features of the vehicular network,
the conventional algorithms with high communication
overhead and low congestion speed are not efficient in the
high-dynamic environment. Some enhanced unsupervised
learning algorithms with high-dynamic compatibility, such
as the Hebb neural network (Hebb-NN), the K-harmonic
means (KHM), and the adaptive K-harmonic means
(AKHM), are proposed to improve the clustering-based
traffic control in vehicular networks [108]–[110].
2) Correlation Recovering-Based Network Traffic Control:
Another application of ML in network traffic control is to
recover information from incomplete data. In the wire-
less network, the exchanged signaling, such as beacons,
causes high overload to channels. For the vehicular net-
work, signaling, including safety information and location
information, is more frequent and easy to be congested.
Furthermore, because of the high-dynamic topology of the
vehicular network, vehicles in remote areas are difficult
to get complete global information timely. Kato et al. [98]
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
proposed that the deep learning can be used in a network
for intelligent traffic control by recovering the routing
information from historical traffic patterns collected only
from edge nodes. The correlations between traffic pat-
terns and routing decisions are hidden in the collected
data. To find the hidden correlation, the DBN NN that
enables each router recovering the correlation and estimat-
ing the traffic situation of the whole network can make
the routing decision adaptively. Then, a GPU-accelerated
deep-learning algorithm for traffic control is introduced
for a software-defined router (SDR)-enabled dynamic net-
work [97], [115].
Besides recovering incomplete data, deep learning is
also good at recovering related information from mixed
data filled with redundant information. To choose the
optimal action for intelligent traffic control, we should
first understand the correlation between massive parame-
ters (e.g., node density, spatial distribution pattern, and
wireless channel conditions), which is conventionally mod-
eled with nonlinear equations and solved with heuristic
algorithms. To simplify such a problem, the ML-based
algorithm is employed for processing the correlation
understanding and corresponding decision in one slot. For
example, Slavik and Mahgoub [99] proposed using super-
vised ML to optimize the parameters in multihop broadcast
protocols for vehicular networks. In [100], the vehicles are
considered as the relay nodes to disseminate sharing con-
tent data. In order to ensure the minimum delay and high
data availability of data dissemination process, the CNN-
based scheme is proposed to model the correlation of
social attributes and mobility among vehicles, with gradi-
ent descent process, and the optimal vehicle dissemination
strategy can be approximated [100], [102].
C. Open Issue: From Network Virtualization to
Intelligentization
The heterogeneous and large-scale structure makes the
future vehicular network hard to be embedded with effi-
cient ML algorithms. For many years, the ML-based net-
work functions have been designed, which have been
distributed to adapt to the sliced network requirement
and local features of various subnetworks. The interac-
tions between distributed network functions are time-
consuming and high cost. The SDN/NFV is proposed
to enable software network functions and networking
slicing for virtualizing various heterogeneous networks.
For example, He et al. [116] proposed the software-
defined vehicular network (SDVN), which enables future
rapid network innovation. Liu et al. [117] proposed that
the SDN can be embedded with mobile-edge computing
(MEC) to enable scalable and quick response for the
heterogeneous vehicular network. Given the virtualization
to the vehicular network, the NFV is expected to be a
potential approach for future intelligentization in a 6G
vehicular network. However, one big challenge of the
existing SDN and network virtualization technologies is
that the network entities are hard to fit for the diverse
requirements, such as resource allocation, traffic control,
and cloud computing synchronously. Furthermore, the vir-
tualization should embrace new radio access interfaces,
such as terahertz communications and intelligent surfaces
in 6G [1].
V. A P P L I C A T I O N S OF ML FOR
SECURITY IN VEHICULAR NETWORK
ML has been widely used in network security for many
years. Both the classification ability of supervised learn-
ing and the clustering ability of unsupervised learning
are suitable for anomaly detection in a wireless network.
Besides, the reinforcement learning is proposed to be
the potential coordination tool to balance the tradeoff
between security and network performance [133]. The
vehicular network advanced from wireless network inher-
its ML-based security algorithms but also brings many new
challenges. The first challenge is that the instruction in
the vehicular network focuses not only on the network
environment but also on the physical environment, such
as malicious vehicle behaviors. Second, the vehicular net-
work has some distinctive network structures, such as the
clustered vehicles, which cause the group behaviors in the
cluster to be additionally considered. Besides, the vehicle
is a sophisticated equipment, which has complex security
issue itself [134]. Finally, there are five distinctive features
as mentioned in Section II-C, and the ML-based security
algorithms should satisfy the specific requirement of the
vehicular network.
The cybersecurity intrusion detection methods are
mainly divided into three types: the misuse-based detec-
tion, the anomaly-based detection, and the hybrid detec-
tion. In this section, we introduce the ML-based vehicular
security methods in terms of the three detection types. The
detailed characteristics are shown in Table 3.
A. ML for Misuse Detection in Vehicular Network
The misuse detection is a classical attack detection
approach, which can detect the known attacks by using
the recorded signatures of the existing attacks. Such a kind
of searching and marching process is well addressed by ML
algorithms.
Almost 30 years ago, the NN was already used for
misuse detection in cyber-physical systems [118]. By com-
paring the current activity against the expected actions
of an intruder, the NN extracts the features from the
node’s behavior patterns and searches for the existing
feature map to clarify the maliciousness of the node. With
deep learning emerging as a promising technique of ML
and showing much better performance than the shallow
ML, Kang and Kang [121] proposed a DNN-based mali-
cious attack detection mechanism that uses probability-
based feature vectors to train the deep NN and detect
misuse in the in-vehicle network. Besides, Anzer and
Elhadef [131] proposed an intrusion detection system in
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Table 3 ML-Based Security Methods in Vehicular Network
in-vehicle network security using deep learning, which
achieves comparatively lower rate of false positives. Fad-
lullah et al. [135] proposed that the QoS and security
can be modeled as a stochastic game in the dynamic
and heterogeneous network. To deal with the case of
multiagent cooperative attack, Xu et al. [119] modeled
the eavesdropping and jamming attacks and the corre-
sponding secure strategy selection as a stochastic game.
By analyzing the existence and convergence of NE in the
stochastic game, a Q-learning-based intelligent selection
algorithm of secure strategy is proposed in the dynamic
radio environments.
B. ML for Anomaly and Hybrid Detection in
Vehicular Network
Misuse-based detection algorithms depending on the
existing signatures of attacks cannot detect the novel
attacks, which has no signature in the database. In order to
conquer the novel attack issue, the anomaly-based detec-
tion algorithm is proposed, which models behaviors as a
benchmark and identifies anomalies as deviations from
normal behavior. Without the signature updating process,
the anomaly detection can deal with the novel attacks and
handle the changing environment in real time. Further-
more, the detected results can be labeled with signatures
for misuse detection, which saves human resources and
leads to quick hybrid detection.
Considering the excellent performance of using Bayes
learning in the filtering algorithm, Benferhat et al. [120]
proposed a Bayes-learning-based alert correlation algo-
rithm to detect complex and coordinated attacks. To detect
the fault data injection attacks in the vehicular network,
Sargolzaei et al. [122] proposed an NN-based intelli-
gent security system on the cooperative adaptive cruise
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control layer of a vehicular platoon to improve the
network reliability, robustness, and security. However, this
proposal does not consider the dynamics of the vehicular
network. Scalabrin et al. [129] analyzed the automated
and runtime of moving vehicular data and proposed a
Bayesian-prediction-based anomaly detection framework
for the dynamic vehicular network. By further considering
both the high mobility and limited resources of vehicles,
Wahab et al. [123] proposed a VSM-based multidecision
intelligent malicious attacks’ detection system for the clus-
tered vehicular network. In the proposal, the VSM is
employed in the vehicle cluster to classify the cooper-
ative/malicious vehicles in an online manner, with the
cooperative vehicles clustering mechanism, and both the
overhead and detection accuracy can be improved. In
addition, Grover et al. [127], [128] proposed that different
ML algorithms, such as Bayes learning, random forest (RF),
and Ada Boost, can be employed in VANET for malicious
nodes’ detection. With the experiments, the ML-based
malicious detection algorithms show consistent perfor-
mance in the various high-dynamic vehicular networks.
The abovementioned methods detect anomaly by using
supervised learning to identify the abnormal behavior.
However, the anomaly detection process is computation
and time consuming, which causes inaccurate detection
in a dynamic environment. Furthermore, the training and
detection process based on the existing labeled data is not
capable of dynamic changing attacks. Thus, Sequeira and
Zaki [124] proposed an unsupervised-learning-based (e.g.,
K -means) anomaly detection algorithm, which does not
need the labeled data and can detect dynamic intrusions
in real time by using semi-incremental techniques. Also
considering the unsupervised approach, Maglaras [132]
proposed a distributed intrusion detection system for the
vehicular network, which is based on the recursive
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Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches

K -means clustering module and can detect the
dynamic intrusions recursively. Besides, Sedjelmaci and
Senouci [130] proposed an unsupervised-clustering-based
collaborative intrusion detection framework on securing
vehicular networks, and the proposal based on the stable
vehicles clustering is suitable for specific characteristics,
such as frequent changing topology and high vehicle
mobility of VANET. The abovementioned methods focus
either on the misuse detection or on anomaly detection,
which is not practical for real scenarios where both
the existing and novel attacks are jointly employed.
Thus, the researchers further proposed the RF-based
hybrid detection for both misuse and anomaly in the
network [125], [126]. In summary, the ML algorithms with
supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement manners can
be effectively employed for intrusion detection by suiting
for the very characteristics of the vehicular network.
C. Open Issue: From Reactive to Proactive
The 6G network with global intelligentization requires
more strict constraints of security. For a communication
system, there are four main security requirements of
confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and availability that
need to be satisfied [136]. However, in the conventional
vehicular network, the promotion of security is always
accompanied by an increase in the communication costs.
The proactive exploration-based detection always leads to
high signaling and communication cost [137]. To balance
the communication QoS and security, the existing security
approaches mainly depend on reactive detection that can
relatively save the communication cost. The 6G network
with ultralow delay and super-high network capacity,
where the communication resources are unlimited,
is expected to be the new paradigm for the proactive
exploration-based security approaches. Furthermore,
proactive ML, such as reinforcement learning and imitative
learning, is proposed as the new intelligent tool for
improving the performance of proactive detection [133].
As such, the ML-based proactive security methods are
expected to be a worthy research direction toward the
6G vehicular network.
VI. C O N C L U S I O N
ML, especially deep-learning technology, has proved to
be the potential solution for paving the way to future
intelligence in various systems. In this article, we investi-
gated the applications of ML technologies in the vehicular
network toward the future 6G intelligentized network. The
survey focused on the distinctive challenges in the exist-
ing vehicular communication, networking, and security,
and investigated the corresponding ML-based solutions.
In addition, we listed some worthy works topics, which
might be interesting for the next studies.

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 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
Tang et al.: Future Intelligent and Secure Vehicular Network Toward 6G: ML Approaches
Fengxiao Tang (Member, IEEE) received
the B.E. degree in measurement and con-
trol technology and instrument from the
Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan,
China, in 2012, the M.S. degree in software
engineering from Central South University,
Changsha, China, in 2015, and the Ph.D.
degree from the Graduate School of Infor-
mation Sciences (GSIS), Tohoku University,
Sendai, Japan, in 2019.
He is currently an Assistant Professor with GSIS, Tohoku Univer-
sity. His research interests are unmanned aerial vehicles system,
Internet-of-Things (IoT) security, game theory optimization, and
machine-learning algorithm.
Dr. Tang was a recipient of the prestigious Dean’s and President’s
Awards from Tohoku University in 2019 and several best paper
awards at conferences, including IEEE International Conference on
Network Infrastructure and Digital Content (IC-NIDC) 2018 and IEEE
Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2017/2018.
Yuichi Kawamoto (Member, IEEE) received
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in information
science from Tohoku University, Japan, in
2013 and 2016, respectively.
He is currently an Associate Professor
with the Graduate School of Information Sci-
ences (GSIS), Tohoku University. He has pub-
lished more than 60 peer-reviewed articles,
including several high quality publications in
prestigious IEEE journals and conferences. His research interests
cover a wide range of areas, including satellite communications,
unmanned aircraft system (UAS) networks, wireless and mobile
networks, ad hoc and sensor networks, green networking, and
network security.
Dr. Kawamoto received the best paper awards at many inter-
national conferences, including IEEE Flagship Events, such as the
IEEE Global Communications Conference in 2013 (GLOBECOM’13),
the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference
in 2014 (WCNC’14), and the IEEE International Conference on
Communications in 2018 (ICC’18). He was also a recipient of the
prestigious Dean’s and President’s Award from Tohoku University in
2016. He is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information,
and Communication Engineers (IEICE).
Nei Kato (Fellow, IEEE) is currently a Full
Professor (Deputy Dean) with the Gradu-
ate School of Information Sciences (GSIS)
and the Director of Research Organization
of Electrical Communication (ROEC), Tohoku
University, Sendai, Japan. He has published
more than 400 articles in prestigious peer-
reviewed journals and conferences. He has
been engaged in research on computer net-
working, wireless mobile communications, satellite communica-
tions, ad hoc and sensor and mesh networks, smart grid, artificial
intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and pattern
recognition.
Dr. Kato is a Fellow of The Engineering Academy of Japan and
Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
(IEICE). He is also the Vice-President (Member & Global Activities)
of the IEEE Communications Society from 2018 to 2019. He was
a member of the IEEE Communications Society Award Committee
from 2015 to 2017. His awards include the Minoru Ishida Foundation
Research Encouragement Prize in 2003, the Distinguished Contri-
butions to Satellite Communications Award from the IEEE Com-
munications Society of the Satellite and Space Communications
Technical Committee in 2005, the FUNAI information Science Award
in 2007, the TELCOM System Technology Award from Foundation
16 P ROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE
for Electrical Communications Diffusion in 2008, the IEICE Network
System Research Award in 2009, the IEICE Satellite Communi-
cations Research Award in 2011, the KDDI Foundation Excellent
Research Award in 2012, the IEICE Communications Society Distin-
guished Service Award in 2012, the IEICE Communications Soci-
ety Best Paper Award in 2012, the Distinguished Contributions
to Disaster-Resilient Networks R&D Award from the Ministry of
Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, in 2014, the Outstand-
ing Service and Leadership Recognition Award in 2016 from the
IEEE Communications Society Ad Hoc & Sensor Networks Technical
Committee, the Radio Achievements Award from the Ministry of
Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, in 2016, the IEEE Com-
munications Society Asia–Pacific Outstanding Paper Award in 2017,
the Prize for Science and Technology from the Minister of Edu-
cation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, in 2018,
the Award from the Tohoku Bureau of Telecommunications from the
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, in 2018,
and the Best Paper Awards from IEEE ICC/IEEE Global Commu-
nications Conference (GLOBECOM)/IEEE Wireless Communications
and Networking Conference (WCNC)/VTC. He was the Chair of the
IEEE Communications Society Sendai Chapter. He has served as
the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Network Magazine from 2015 to
2017, a Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors of the IEEE
Communications Society from 2014 to 2016, and the Vice Chair of
the Fellow Committee of the IEEE Computer Society in 2016. He
has also served as the Chair of Satellite and Space Communications
Technical Committee from 2010 to 2012 and the Ad Hoc & Sensor
Networks Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society
from 2014 to 2015. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY since 2017. He is also
a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society and
the Vehicular Technology Society.
Jiajia Liu (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the B.S. degree in computer science from
the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin,
China, in 2004, the M.S. degree in computer
science from Xidian University, Xi’an, China,
in 2009, and the Ph.D. degree in information
sciences from Tohoku University, Sendai,
Japan, in 2012.
He was a Full Professor with the School of
Cyber Engineering, Xidian University, from 2013 to 2018, where
he was the Director of the Internet of Things Security Research
Center from 2016 to 2018. Since January 2019, he has been a
Full Professor with the School of Cyberspace Security, Northwestern
Polytechnical University, Xi’an. He was selected into the prestigious
Huashan Scholars Program by Xidian University in 2015. He has
published around 130 peer-reviewed articles in many high-quality
publications, including the prestigious IEEE journals and confer-
ences. His research interests cover a wide range of areas, including
load balancing, wireless and mobile ad hoc networks, fiber-wireless
networks, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and storage,
network security, LTE-A and 5G, SDN, and NFV.
Dr. Liu received the IEEE ComSoc Asia–Pacific Outstanding Young
Researcher Award in 2017, the IEEE TVT Top Editor Award in 2017,
the Best Paper Awards from many international conferences, includ-
ing IEEE flagship events, such as the IEEE GLOBECOM in 2016,
the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference
(WCNC) in 2012 and 2014, and the IEEE International Conference
on Network Infrastructure and Digital Content (IC-NIDC) in 2018. He
was a recipient of the prestigious 2012 Niwa Yasujiro Outstanding
Paper Award due to his exceptional contribution to the analytics
modeling of two-hop ad hoc mobile networks, which has been
regarded by the award committees as the theoretical foundation for
analytical evaluation techniques of future ad hoc mobile networks.
He is also a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications
Society.