Selecting Model of Group Leader Based on a Trust-Rating-Assessment Mechanism in VANET

In VANET, the vehicles can be separated into different groups. There is a group leader (GL) who manages the group members and group key in each group. In previous studies, selection of GL is seldom discussed, and a new GL is selected according to random numbers in most situations. In this paper, we propose a selecting model based on a trust rating-assessment mechanism to detail the problem of searching GL. Moreover, there are three layers regarding this model, which are record layer, experience layer and distance layer. Through filtering layer by layer, we confirm the only GL in the last layer. In our mechanism, vehicles provide their locations as regions instead of exact points to a location service provider (LSP) to protect their location privacy.