Trust Based Group Formation in VANET

In this paper, we present a reputation assisted trust management mechanism for vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) using privacy preserving trusted group formation. In a VANET, vehicles or road side units can be malicious or malfunction making security essential. A distributed trust management provides a lightweight security alternative to existing security techniques especially in VANET. The trust mechanism framework is based on group formation which is multi step process. Once a group is formed, the group manager tracks the behavior of vehicles and changes their trust value in accordance to its current behavior which is essential in large scale road transportation. It can also admit new vehicles and eject old vehicles depending on their current trust values. Simulation results indicate the time taken for the process of group maintenance is small and is in the order of milliseconds. This time is sufficiently small and the spread of malicious messages can be prevented.