Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) is an area under intensive research that promises to improve security on the road by developing an intelligent transport system (ITS). The main purpose is to create an inter-communication network among vehicles, as well as between vehicles and the supporting infrastructure. The system pretends to offer drivers data concerning other nearby vehicles, especially those within sight. The problem of information sharing among vehicles and between the vehicle and the infrastructure is another critical aspect. A general communication infrastructure is required for the notification, storage, management, and provision of context-aware information about user travel. Ideally an integrated vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication paradigm enriched with an information management system would solve the problem. The infrastructure should manage all the collected safety events garnered from vehicles and the interesting information to be provided to the user, which is adapted to the car context and driver preferences. Finally, security issues should be considered. Since the information conveyed over a vehicular network may affect critical decisions, fail-safe security is a necessity. The first directive for any V2V communication scheme is, therefore, that every safety message must be authenticated. Because of the high speed and therefore short duration within which communication between two cars is possible, communication must be non-interactive, and message overhead must be very low. The urgency of safety messages implies that authentication must be instantaneous without additional communication. Moreover, providing strong security in vehicular networks raises important privacy concerns that must also be considered. Safety messages include data that is dangerous to the personal privacy of vehicle owners. Most relevant is the danger of tracking a vehicle through positional information. A set of security basics to address these challenges should be proposed that can be used as the building blocks of secure applications. In this article we will focus on the aforementioned technologies and engineering issues related to vehicular ad-hoc networks, emphasizing the challenges that must be overcome to accomplish the desired vehicular safety infrastructure.
Data Pouring and Buffering on the Road: A New Data Dissemination Paradigm for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks