Invulnerability analysis of vehicular ad hoc networks based on temporal networks

As network invulnerability can provide the optimization of network topology control, protocol development and network management with new guidance, the invulnerability properties for vehicular ad hoc networks against random attacks and intentional attacks are analyzed in this paper. Based on vehicular mobility simulation with VanetMobiSim, it is firstly shown that the traditional static approach when adopted in VANETs whose topology frequently changed over time overestimates system invulnerability while a temporal approximation captures more accurately the system performance. Then the influences by patterns of attacks, communication range and network density on invulnerability of VANETs are given. The experimental results show that VANETs have a strong invulnerability faced with random attacks while its invulnerability under intentional attacks is fairly low and the temporal invulnerability increases with communication radius getting larger under intentional attack. However, the effect of communication radius on temporal invulnerability for VANETs faced with random attack is uncertain. What is more, node density has a positive impact on invulnerability.