Using RSUs as delegates for pervasive access to services in vehicle ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks, also known as VANETs, enable vehicles which are not necessarily within the same radio transmission range to communicate with each other. In addition to allowing direct communication between vehicles, VANETs also enable vehicles to connect to Roadside Units (RSUs) which are inexpensive infrastructure that have the capability of communicating with each others and with passing by vehicles. RSUs have so far been used for various purposes such as information disseminators, traffic directories, security providers, and service directories that store information about service providers. In this paper, we propose a system that uses RSUs as delegates of users in a VANET to acquire services from service providers without the users directly connecting to them. Since some of these services may require user authentication with the corresponding service providers, the system implements a method for allowing RSUs to use the user's credentials to get the requested services without jeopardizing the user's privacy. We evaluated the performance of the proposed system using the ns2 simulation software and demonstrated through comparing the results to those of an existing system the feasibility and efficiency of the new system in terms of query delay and traffic generation.