Improved authentication in vanets using a connected dominating set-based privacy preservation protocol

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) provide real-time communication between vehicle units for comfortable and safe driving. VANETs are driven by the concept of broadcasting messages to other vehicle units. These messages are disseminated to other vehicles with proper security assurances that ensure authentication. In this paper, an authentication model for securing communications by authenticating vehicles in VANETs is developed, and an ECC algorithm is provided for the authentication of vehicles. Since the nodes are mobile in nature and clustered into zones, a connected dominating set-based privacy preservation (CDSPP) and routing algorithm is proposed to effectively route the packets between the authenticated vehicles. A results analysis shows that the proposed method is better than existing approaches in terms of authenticating vehicles and strictly avoids intrusions in the system. A simulation is carried out with NS 2.34 to evaluate the proposed method. The performance of the proposed method is tested with respect to various metrics, including the packet delivery ratio, latency, average routing overhead, and complexity of signature verification. The proposed CDSPP approach is compared with conventional authentication methods, including CPPA and EIBS. The result shows that the proposed CDSPP method achieves an improved packet delivery ratio and reduces the latency, average routing overhead, and signature complexity compared to those of CPPA and EIBS.