Providing Authentication and Access Control in Vehicular Network Environment

In this paper we make use of the recent advances in 802.11 technologies and the new perspectives for ad hoc networks to provide a novel architecture for Inter-Vehicular communication on highways. This architecture provides authentication and access control for mobile clients on highways and ensures network transparency to mobile clients in their vehicles. We propose an integrated solution considering the service provider as the core entity for all authentication and access control operations. We develop an AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting) mechanism to authenticate mobile clients with respect to service providers authorizing them to services’ access, and ensuring a confidential data transfer between each communicating parties. Our mechanism adapts 802.11i standard to the vehicular environment setting up secure links, in layer 2, that guarantee confidential data transfer. To achieve a reliable transfer, we propose a routing approach based on the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol that is expected to provide a reliable routing infrastructure in such a hybrid scalable wireless environment. Also, we present a simple and appropriate scheme for assigning IP addresses to mobile clients. Finally, we give a brief analysis and discuss the advantages and limitations of the proposed architecture.