LPPSA: an efficient Lightweight Privacy-Preserving Signature-based Authentication protocol for a vehicular ad hoc network

Abstract

The rapid expansion in research has led to vast interest in intelligent transport systems (ITSs), especially vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), which include communication among smart vehicles by using built-in sensors. Authorizing these vehicles and preserving their privacy while sharing messages play an important role in secured data transmission. Messages should be signed by vehicles and verified between legitimate entities to establish trust and decrease security risks. Traditional protocols operate in a centralized mode, where a trusted authority (TA) is tasked with authorizing secure communication between vehicles and bears the computational costs for the security operations for every entity in a VANET. Lightweight and secure solutions are important to ensure the advancement of wireless communication by preventing malicious users. This article presents a lightweight privacy-preserving signature-based authentication (LPPSA) protocol that solves the limitations of state-of-the-art protocols while reducing the computational burden on a TA. The proposed LPPSA protocol takes advantage of the short elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) parameters and leverages the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm to generate shared secret keys. The roadside unit (RSU) plays a major role in assisting this authentication process and helps in reducing the overall computational complexity of a TA. The RSU provides lightweight secure authentication along with malicious vehicle revocation. The performance analysis and comparison with similar protocols show that the proposed LPPSA is more efficient, as it reduces the security risks and lowers the computational complexity of the overall system.