Context-Aware Trust-Based Management of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs)

This paper introduces a context-based monitoring and evaluation scheme to promote trusted behavior among agents in VANETs. Contexts are associated with data, message, and protocol exchanged between VANET agents. A context will include spatial-temporal information, agent information of interest, and purpose of communication. Thus, contextual reasoning and adaptation, that are fundamental to trustworthy interactions among VANET agents, are possible. The paper discusses an architecture in which VANET agent trusts are defined by supervisory agents in the transportation system, and context-dependent trust evaluations are done automatically. The VANET architectural features can enable safety of the vehicles, improve traffic flow, and successfully survive different types of security attacks on the network.