GSTR: Secure Multi-hop Message Dissemination in Connected Vehicles using Social Trust Model

TL;DR

GSTR is a secure multi-hop routing protocol for connected vehicles that leverages social trust models to enhance message dissemination efficiency and reliability in vehicular networks.

Contribution

It introduces a geographic social trust routing approach that considers social trust levels for secure, efficient multi-hop message dissemination in connected vehicle environments.

Findings

GSTR achieves lower packet loss at high vehicle densities.

GSTR ensures efficient resource utilization.

GSTR outperforms existing routing protocols in security and reliability.

Abstract

The emergence of connected vehicles paradigm has made secure communication a key concern amongst the connected vehicles. Communication between the vehicles and Road Side Units (RSUs) is critical to disseminate message among the vehicles. We focus on secure message transmission in connected vehicles using multi_hop social networks environment to deliver the message with varying trustworthiness. We proposed a Geographic Social Trust Routing (GSTR) approach; messages are propagated using multiple hops and by considering the various available users in the vehicular network. GSTR is proposed in an application perspective with an assumption that the users are socially connected. The users are selected based on trustworthiness as defined by social connectivity. The route to send a message is calculated based on the highest trust level of each node by using the nodes social network connections along the path in the network. GSTR determines the shortest route using the trusted nodes along the route for message dissemination. GSTR is made delay tolerant by introducing message storage in the cloud if a trustworthy node is unavailable to deliver the message. We compared the proposed approach with Geographic and Traffic Load based Routing (GTLR), Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), Trust-based GPSR (T_GPSR). The performance results obtained show that GSTR ensures efficient resource utilization, lower packet losses at high vehicle densities.