An Enhanced Authentication Protocol based Group for Vehicular Communications over 5G Networks

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are applications that aim to provide innovative services in different modes of transport and traffic management. They allow users to be better informed about road conditions, and make the use of transport networks safer, more coordinated and smarter. Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are a key component of intelligent transportation systems. They allow users to have information on their route, weather, road conditions, and Internet access, all in real time. These networks also provide access to various relaxation and entertainment applications such as transporting multimedia data, obtaining tourist information. The VANET network provides access to information in real time and in private. This fact has a great impact on the behavior of the user, his life and that of the passengers. This network also ensures user security by preserving anonymity and securing their personal data. Several VANET safety challenges are considered by the existing vehicular network security standards. However, given the advancement of Fifth-Generation (5G) networks and the requirement for a variety of different applications and services across vehicular networks, merging 5G and vehicular ad-hoc networks is crucial. Nevertheless, as the immense amount of vehicles growing daily and each one of them needs to execute a complete network authentication process to join the network, there may be network congestion when a group of vehicles requires simultaneous access, and may also have a major impact on the high rate of 5G. The Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) mechanism introduced by the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in Fourth-Generation (4G) and 5G networks is inadequate to manage many devices. The purpose of this work is to propose an enhanced and secure authentication and key agreement protocol based group of vehicles is 5G networks. The security analysis verified by Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool has demonstrated that our solution achieves the security and privacy objectives. In addition, the performance evaluations in terms of communication and computational overheads illustrate that our protocol outperforms several existing protocols.