A Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) is a form of Mobile ad-hoc network, to
provide communications among nearby vehicles and between vehicles and nearby
fixed roadside equipment. The key operation in VANETs is the broadcast of
messages. Consequently, the vehicles need to make sure that the information has
been sent by an authentic node in the network. VANETs present unique challenges
such as high node mobility, real-time constraints, scalability, gradual
deployment and privacy. No existent technique addresses all these requirements.
In particular, both inter-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside wireless
communications present different characteristics that should be taken into
account when defining node authentication services. That is exactly what is
done in this paper, where the features of inter-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside
communications are analyzed to propose differentiated services for node
authentication, according to privacy and efficiency needs