Trust-Based Distributed Authentication Method for Collision Attack Avoidance in VANETs

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a collection of mobile vehicles that aids roadside communication through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure operation modes. The network is autonomous and, hence, requires a wide range of security measures to protect its communications from attack. Recent studies on VANET security have focused on resolving the issues due to computation and distribution density of the vehicles. Probability distribution measures have been administered for detecting collision attacks, which increases the computational complexity. In this paper, a trust-based distributed authentication (TDA) method that relies on a global trust server and vehicle behavior for avoiding collision attacks is proposed. This method ensures both inter-vehicular and intra-vehicular communication security in the network. In addition, a channel state routing protocol (CSRP) is proposed to improve the communication reliability among the vehicles. Reliable vehicles are identified according to the on-board unit (OBU) energy and the channel state of the vehicle to deliver seamless communication. The biased methods are assimilated to improve the communication reliability by avoiding collision attacks and improving secured packets flow in VANETs. In particular, the CSRP minimizes the energy exploitation of OBUs and time delay. TDA improves the security of the network by improving the collision recognition rate and the broadcast rate.