A SECURE AND RELIABLE ROUTING PROTOCOL LEVERAGING FULLY HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION AND TRUST-AWARE CLUSTERING

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) have the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry by enabling intelligent transportation systems and improving road safety. However, VANETs are vulnerable to various security threats, such as attacks on communication links and malicious nodes. In this paper, we propose a fully homomorphic encryption-based trust-aware clustering-based routing (FHE-TACBR) protocol for secure and reliable VANET communications. FHE-TACBR uses clustering-based routing to group vehicles based on their geographic proximity and assigns a cluster head to act as a communication hub. Trust metrics are used to evaluate the reliability of vehicles in the network based on their past behavior, current behavior, and willingness to cooperate. The choice of FHE over conventional encryption schemes (e.g., AES, ECC) is motivated by its ability to enable computations on encrypted data without decryption, thereby eliminating potential attack windows. By lowering the possibility of compromised data this feature improves confidentiality while preserving the integrity of intermediate computations. It also slightly increases end-to-end latency because of encryption overhead but it still achieves higher throughput through fewer retransmissions and secure routing. To further improve communication security and dependability FHE-TACBR also uses message authentication intrusion detection and quick response techniques. According to simulation results FHE-TACBR provides a much higher security level while outperforming baseline protocols in PDR end-to-end delay and throughput. Furthermore, it is feasible for real-time vehicular communication because its time-complexity is competitive with cutting-edge VANET routing protocols.