A Scalable Authentication Scheme with Anonymity for Vehicular Networks

The extensive development of vehicle networks, particularly Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs), has revolutionized the area of road safety, traffic management, and entertainment services of transportation systems. However, maintaining privacy protection and scalability in the network is a tremendous task in the context of the dynamic movement of vehicles and a need for immediate, effective communication. This article presents a new privacy-preserving and scalable authentication protocol (PPSAP) for VANETs with the purpose of addressing the intrinsic problems of user privacy, security, and scalability. Our protocol integrates elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), digital signatures, and light-weight authentication protocols to ensure secure communication while not infringing vehicle privacy. Simulation results indicate that PPSAP ensures significantly improved security, privacy, and scalability compared to existing protocols.