A Comparative Survey of Authentication Schemes Suitable for the Audit of V2X Communications

The rise of connected vehicles has transformed transportation by enhancing mobility, safety, and driving comfort. However, ensuring secure and trustworthy communications in vehicular networks remains a challenge due to the risks of malicious activities, privacy breaches, and unauthorized access. This paper aims to address these challenges by evaluating and comparing existing authentication schemes used in vehicular communications. Specifically, the article focuses on analyzing their efficiency, security, and applicability for audit systems in Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications. The main objectives of this study are to provide a clear taxonomy of authentication strategies, evaluate their ability to preserve anonymity and integrity while ensuring accountability, and identify protocols suitable for robust audit mechanisms. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, this paper highlights the strengths and limitations of current solutions, emphasizing aspects like scalability, privacy preservation, and infrastructure dependency. Findings indicate that combining Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)-based methods with Blockchain technology can yield secure and transparent communication solutions. Nevertheless, significant hurdles remain in scenarios lacking infrastructure support. The key contribution of this work consists in identifying authentication protocols that successfully balance security, efficiency, and privacy–while still enabling effective audits–thereby laying the groundwork for designing reliable, trust-oriented audit systems in tomorrow’s vehicular networks, including outside the infrastructure coverage.