Physical Layer-Based Message Authentication inVANETs

Abstract

Authenticating legitimate nodes is a major concern of the envisioned vehicular networks. To achieve this, standards and literature propose to use asymmetric cryptographic mechanisms which generate significant overheads in terms of time and power consumption. In this paper, we address this problem and we propose a novel idea of exploiting physical layer characteristics to rely on them for re-authenticating future beacons after verifying the first one cryptographically. Despite the challenges in such high mobility networks, possible concrete approaches to start the evaluation of our scheme are presented. Our approaches are inspired by the vehicular channel related work conclusions which give signs of future success to our scheme in this critical field.