CSTM: Cluster-based Security Trust Mechanism for VANET

Abstract

Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) allows communications between vehicles and roadside infrastructure. Various information can be propagated by the vehicles to ensure the safety and security of the driver and passengers by reducing the transport accidents and traffic congestion, besides, VANET communication can also provide navigation and entertainment service. However, the existence of the malicious nodes results in falsified and modified messages which could affect the performance of the network and even worse, could cause dangerous situation: accident, collision, traffic congestion, etc. In order to ensure the security and stability of VANET communication, we can introduce the concept of trust and improve the credibility of communication between vehicles through trust management. Therefore, this paper proposes a cluster-based security trust mechanism for VANET. By grouping vehicles with the same speed attribute into clusters, the network topology tends to be stable, and the information credibility and node reputation value are calculated by the cluster head, to determine the authenticity of the event message.