A Cross-Layer Approach to Privacy-Preserving Authentication in WAVE-Enabled VANETs

We present an anonymous authentication and verification scheme for the IEEE Wireless Access in Vehicular Communications (WAVE)-based vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Our contribution includes vehicular message authentication and an efficient prioritized verification strategy for periodic road safety messages. A variation of elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) is used in combination with the identity-based (ID-based) signature, where current position information on a vehicle is utilized as the ID of the corresponding vehicle. This waives the need for a third-party public key certificate for message authentication in VANETs. A high-density road traffic condition poses a challenge for authentication of vehicular messages since the required verification time is often much longer than the average interarrival time. To mitigate the issue, messages of each traffic class are verified following the VANET´s medium access control (MAC) layer priorities and the application relevance of individual safety messages. Performance analysis and simulation results have shown that our approach is secure, privacy preserving, scalable, and resource efficient.