Stimulating cooperation in self-organized vehicular networks

A Vehicular Ad-hoc NETwork (VANET) is a special form of Mobile Ad-hoc Network designed to provide communications among nearby vehicles and between vehicles and nearby fixed roadside equipment. Its main goal is to improve safety and comfort for passengers, but it can also be used for commercial applications. In this latter case, it will be necessary to motivate drivers to cooperate and contribute to packet forwarding in Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Roadside communications. This paper examines the problem, analyzes the drawbacks of known schemes and proposes a new secure incentive scheme to stimulate cooperation in VANETs, taking into account factors such as time and distance.