asn2c: Modern ASN.1 Compiler for Advanced Network Messages and Data Structures

The automotive field is experiencing a strong technological evolution in recent years. This evolution is leading to the standardization of novel technologies for connected vehicles (both cellular and Wi-Fi-based), enabling them to exchange data with other vehicles and with the infrastructure, to make transportation safer, greener and more autonomous. All these communication technologies define standardized messages for different purposes, that include exchanging data between road users, but also transmitting management information and requesting certificates for secured data transfers. These messages and their content are usually defined as a set of data structures, in turn defined by the Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) description language. Starting from an ASN.1 definition, several tools enable the automatic generation of code for the encoding and decoding of the messages. One of the most used open-source tool available is asn1c, manteined by a vast community behind this project. In 2020 the European Telecommunications Standards Institute released new ASN.1 files describing the IEEE 1609.2.1. data structures used for certificate needed in the security application defined by IEEE 1609.2. asn1c does not support this files due to the presence of complex structures adopted in the new release. This thesis propose a solution to overcome the described problem, developing a preprocessing layer which main purpose is to analyze the ASN.1 files given as input to asn1c and perform a proper modification to let asn1c manages correctly these files.