Proposing a Distributed and Dynamic Bio-inspired Recognition of Identity in Vehicular Networks

Vehicular networking is an innovation with a variety of applications such as road safety, traffic efficiency, and autonomous driving. It encompasses vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication to support cooperative communication. However, there are many challenges to secure exchanged messages. Currently, secure data communication in vehicular networks is mostly carried out by central security supporting elements, i.e Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Due to increasing numbers of vehicles, connected and autonomous cars, the corresponding environmental concerns, and the evolved mobility forms, PKI-based security will not be sufficient for the security of the future vehicular ecosystem. Therefore, a new vehicle identity scheme and a novel distributed and autonomous model for recognizing authorized and non-authorized vehicles are needed. Biological systems can provide examples of how evolution has solved similar problems of identifying actors in distributed systems. In ant colonies, for example, nestmate recognition is a distributed and cooperative colony-wide process. Based on the principles at work in an ant colony, we propose a novel, distributed and dynamic, collective and cooperative, intelligence-based recognition of identity in vehicular networks. We will develop detailed analogies between ant colonies and vehicular networks, model the identity recognition processes of social insects, and simplify and tune these models for use in vehicle networks. This will enable a resilient, efficient and secure distributed communication system based on Cyberphysical Identification Component (CIC) profiles.