A lightweight certificateless authentication scheme and group key agreement with dynamic updating mechanism for LTE-V-based internet of vehicles in smart cities

Abstract

Internet of vehicle (IoV) is an extension of vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) used in smart cities to achieve a more reliable information sharing and communication among smart vehicles, roadside units (RSUs), and people as well as improved traffic safety and better driving experience. In VANET, communications among vehicles and between vehicles and RSUs are done using the dedicated short range communication (DSRC) protocol. However, this technology faces some drawbacks including high latency, limited spectrum, poor scalability and reliability, and network congestion. To this end, many researchers have explored the complementary benefits of long term evolution-vehicle (LTE-V) such as higher capacity and mobility supports, better spectral efficiency, improved quality of service (QoS), and inter-operability to support vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. The information transmitted in LTE-V must be secured and the privacy of users protected before the deployment of this auspicious technology. In this research article, a lightweight certificateless authentication and group key agreement for LTE-V is proposed. The designed authentication scheme is constructed without using time-consuming operations. A batch verification technique which reduces the computational burden on the RSU when required to authenticate prodigious messages is introduced. The developed group key distribution mechanism achieves group communication and supports dynamic updating with negligible computation. We prove that the proposed scheme is semantically secure in the random oracle model (ROM) based on the intractability of the discrete logarithm problem (DLP), and demonstrate that it meets all the desired privacy and security requirements. An extensive analysis of the performance shows that the scheme is substantially efficient compared with the state-of-the-art schemes. The performance evaluation through experimental simulation further shows the superiority of the proposed scheme over the traditional IEEE 802.11p-based schemes.