Real-Time Tracking and Authentication Protocol for Anonymous Operating Vehicles in Vehicle-Infrastructure Collaborative Systems

Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative Systems (VICS) are widely used in the safe driving and management of operating vehicles (OV). To preserve privacy and resist harmful attacks, digital certificates and signatures are used during vehicle communication. Nonetheless, the existing secure protocol cannot enable the road control center (RCC) to track the anonymous OV in real-time. To implement this additional functionality, this paper proposes a real-time tracking protocol for anonymous OV based on pseudonym certificates and Optimal Asymmetric Encryption padding (OAEP). In this protocol, pseudonym certificates ensure the security of the OV; the OV’s real identity padding by OAEP is encrypted as a ciphertext, which is transmitted to RCC in communication, and RCC decrypts it to achieve real-time tracking. According to the security reduction proofs under the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) given in the random oracle model (RO), the protocol can satisfy the security requirements. Additionally, the performance analysis based on MIRACL shows the protocol is slightly weaker than others, and we analyze the cost of real-time tracking for the reason. Finally, the RSU service rate of the protocol is analyzed according to the performance and velocity-density model, which proves the protocol is stable in this system.