On Joint Privacy and Reputation Assurance for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), privacy protection makes it challenging to maintain a long-term reputation of any node, while reputation management requires reputation manifestation at risk of easier vehicle tracking. Here, JPRA is proposed to reconcile these challenging conflicts and support the synergistic coexistence of both indispensible schemes in VANETs. JPRA adopts a localized reputation management model where the behavior evaluation, reputation aggregation, and reputation manifestation of each node are collectively performed by itself and its neighbors. In this model, novel algorithms are designed to support secure and efficient reputation management in face of node mobility and privacy protection. Furthermore, a conditional reputation discretization algorithm ensures privacy-preserving reputation manifestation for the honest nodes. Theoretical analysis and simulations show that JPRA can efficiently and synergistically support both schemes in VANETs.