SCDS: A Secure Clustering Protocol Using Dempster-Shafer Theory for VANET in Smart City

Abstract

Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is a promising solution for the smart transportation system in the smart city of the future. Vehicular ad hoc networks significantly reduce accidents. Due to the characteristics of Vehicular ad hoc networks such as self-organization, frequent disconnection and rapid topology changes, the development of efficient routing protocols is a challenging task. Clustering is a good approach to solve these problems. But if in the network, one cluster head becomes a malicious node, then the network will not be able to detect errors and recover. A malicious cluster head can change network configuration to perform attacks such as sinkhole, black holes, or selective repeat. These attacks represent a common feature, a malicious node trying to become a cluster head to behave maliciously. In the proposed method, observations about each cluster head are received indefinitely and probabilistically, and then by combining these comments using the rules of Dempster-Shafer theory combination, a definite conclusion is reached about whether a cluster head is malicious or not. The results also show that not every node that requests to be cluster head more than once is always malicious.