Design of Blockchain-Based Lightweight V2I Handover Authentication Protocol for VANET

Connected vehicle means providing different services, such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) from vehicles connected to the network. Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) can support vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications to realize connected vehicle. In VANETs, secure communication must be ensured, as otherwise it can lead to traffic accidents and human injuries. Recently, many studies on V2I authentication have been conducted to guarantee the security of V2I communications. However, recent V2I authentication protocols do not consider the handover situation, and it causes unnecessary computations. As vehicles have limited computing resources, unnecessary computation can lead to overload to the vehicles. In recent years, blockchain-based VANET is an active field of research because it can provide decentralization, data integrity and transparency. Using the strength of the blockchain technology, we design a blockchain-based handover authentication protocol for VANETs. In the proposed protocol, vehicles only perform lightweight computations in handover situations for efficiency of the network. We also conduct the formal analysis such as Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) oracle model, and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation to the proposed protocol. We simulate the proposed protocol using network simulator 3 (NS-3) to verify that the proposed protocol is practical. Finally, we compare the computational cost and security features of the proposed protocol with existing protocols to show that the proposed protocol is more secure and efficient.