A Novel RSU-Based Message Authentication Scheme for VANET

Message authentication, to ensure the receiving message is true and coming from the claimed source, is a key issue in vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) because the message may be life-critical, traffic information, or emergence message transmitted by the strange sources. Due to the nature of realtime and high mobility in VANET message, the traditional PKI security schemes are not suitable for VANET. Aiding of roadside unit (RSU) make message authentication in VANET easily, but it is still embedded some problems: how to authenticate the message transmitted from different RSU range, and to process the vehicle´s message hand-off among different RSU communication range. This paper proposes a comprehensive message authentication scheme which enables the message authentication in intra and inter RSU range, and the hand-off within the different RSUs. The proposed scheme makes the balance in the overhead of computation and communication, and the security against the attacking. The results of efficiency analysis and comparison with the related works show the proposed scheme is a superior message authentication method in VANET.