Improving the Efficiency of a Message Validation System in a Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

Advancements in communication technologies have enabled vehicles to be equipped with computing devices, facilitating communication and autonomous operations. This has led to the emergence of a new networking paradigm known as the vehicular ad hoc Network (VANET). A primary objective of VANET is to enhance road safety and traffic efficiency by enabling the exchange of information among vehicles in various intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications. Vehicles regularly transmit safety messages at a fixed rate, typically 10 messages per second. In high‐traffic scenarios, such as multilane highways or densely packed areas, a vehicle may receive an overwhelming number of safety messages. However, before these messages can be reliably used, they must undergo rigorous cryptographic verification. A significant challenge arises when the message reception rate exceeds the verification rate, leading to inefficiencies. In existing schemes, the basic safety messages (BSMs) of nearby vehicles often undergo redundant verification due to consecutive broadcasts, while BSMs from more distant vehicles within the communication range may not receive adequate verification time. To address this issue, we propose a trust‐based approach to improve the efficiency of message verification in VANET. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method optimizes verification time by selectively skipping the verification of one BSM for trusted vehicles, utilizing the road side unit (RSU). This approach enhances vehicle awareness in compliance with the WAVE standard. The study findings indicate that the proposed method achieves an average awareness quality of 85% for neighboring vehicles, outperforming the existing MLPQ‐CA method, which attains only 70% within the same 100‐m communication range.