Evaluating Handover Impact on IBC-Authenticated Task Offloading in C-V2X VTENs

This study examines the impact of handovers on task offloading latency and authentication demands in Identity-Based Cryptography (IBC)-authenticated Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) Vehicular Twin Edge Networks (VTENs). Leveraging a Proximal Policy Optimization Deep Reinforcement Learning (PPO-DRL) model, we deploy a VTEN actor-critic agent to evaluate latency and authentication frequency across four distinct scenarios, comparing IBC and non-IBC authentication under no-handover and handover conditions. We consider a parallel task offloading strategy in which vehicles continuously offload tasks without waiting for results. Vehicles are strategically placed relative to the nearest edge unit to accurately control and differentiate handover transitions. The results indicate that handovers substantially increase the latency and authentication frequency, intensifying the impact in high-density networks with larger task sizes. With handovers, latency increases by up to 46%, while the authentication frequency often doubles in VTENs.