Faith in vehicles: A set of evaluation criteria for trust management in vehicular ad-hoc network

Abstract

Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a key technology in the domain of transportation which serves as a platform for vehicles to communicate with each other and intelligently exchange critical information, such as collision avoidance messages. Given that potentially life critical information could be exchanged in real time among network entities, it is paramount that this information is authentic (from a legitimate source), reliable and accurate. Moreover, mobility of vehicles creates different contexts in VANET resulting in a diversity of requirements for trust management. This work focuses on the effective modelling and management of trust both as a prerequisite to inter-vehicle communication and as a security measure. To this end, we propose a comprehensive set of criteria which work towards the effective modelling and management of trust in VANET to ensure that the unique characteristics of the network (such as high mobility, dispersion of vehicles, and lack of central architecture) are considered. The contribution of this paper is twofold. (1) We propose 16 criteria for effective trust management in VANET, and (2) evaluate various available trust models based on these proposed criteria.