A Novel Lightweight Privacy-Preservation Authentication Protocol for VANET Environment

The rapid advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has significantly contributed to the emergence of smart cities, which aim to enhance the quality of urban life. Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) play a crucial role in this transformation by enabling improved road safety, traffic management, and passenger comfort. However, ensuring secure and efficient communication within VANETs remains a significant challenge due to vehicle high mobility and dynamic topology. This paper proposes a lightweight and privacy-preserving authentication protocol for secure communication between vehicles and Roadside Units (RSUs). Our scheme includes secure online vehicle and RSUs registration mechanisms with the central Transport Authority (TA). To protect user privacy, we incorporate a blind signature-based strategy that ensures anonymity and unlinkability during interactions with TA and RSU. The protocol leverages lightweight cryptographic primitives such as XOR operations, hash functions, and concatenation, making it suitable for resource-constrained environments like VANETs. Security analysis using the AVISPA tool confirms that the proposed protocol withstands various known attacks, including replay, impersonation, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Performance evaluation demonstrates that our approach offers lower computational and communication overhead than existing solutions.