Designing Anonymous Key Agreement Scheme for Secure Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Presently, the Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is very important for the entire traffic management system. The 5th Generation (5G) enables VANET and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to connect devices in the million/sqkm range with improved performance, incredible transmission speed (terabit), and less cost to serve a vast, transformative, and diverse automobile sector. To ensure security and avoid the free flow of information in highly scalable, dynamic 5G, there are many challenges to restrict unauthenticated users access and proper key agreements with fine-grained access control. Here, a lightweight biometrics-based dynamic Anonymous Key Agreement Scheme (AKAS) with a fine-grained authentication feature is proposed to address challenges related to the restriction of unauthenticated users access and proper key agreement with fine-grained access control specifically for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication in VANET. In the proposed scheme, registered and authorized users can access services or information as per access privilege only. We have simulated our scheme using Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols (AVISPA), Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO), OMNET$++$(Objective Modular Network Testbed in C$++$), and performed formal security analysis using the Real-or-Random (ROR) oracle model. Analysis and simulation results show that our scheme is secured against various well-known attacks. Further, we have compared the security and efficiency of our scheme with the existing schemes and found that our proposed protocol is more secure, lighter, 5G-friendly, scalable, and even faster than the other related schemes.