Post-Quantum Weighted Anonymous Authentication for Hybrid VANET MAC Protocol

Efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols are crucial for time-sensitive transmissions of safety and non-safety messages. The IEEE 802.11p standard requires enhancements for varying channel conditions, including error-prone environments. This paper proposes HVMAC, a hybrid VANET MAC protocol that enhances Quality of Service (QoS) for time-sensitive data traffic applications. It categorizes service channels into contention and scheduled channels. The HVMAC protocol is modeled with Markov chains and evaluated against IEEE 802.11p on offered load, average delay, throughput, reliability, and energy consumption (upto 90%). To improve HVMAC security during safety messages (SM) and service advertisement messages (SAM) transmission, a Post-Quantum Weighted Anonymous Authentication (PQWAA) is proposed. The weighted certificate authority (WCA) assigns priority weights to vehicles, for effective traffic management and resource distribution. PQWAA ensures secure authentication and message integrity using quantum-resistant cryptography and pseudonym-based key derivation. Integrating PQWAA with HVMAC ensures energy efficiency and secure communication for both safety and non-safety applications, offering a comprehensive solution for modern VANET environments. The proposed protocol is analyzed with existing techniques based on the packet delivery ratio, throughput, and average packet delay, values of 99%, (45-50)Mbps, and 50 ms. Also, the HVMAC protocol shows 81.23% lower channel collision than TDMA-MAC.