Information Dissemination and Information Assurance in Vehicular Networks: A Survey

Vehicular networks aimed toward providing roadside services such as traffic alerts, estimated time to reach a destination, alternative routes, and in general improve the efficiency and safety on the road are emerging in both the United States and Europe. Information exchange in such networks occurs between vehicles (inter-vehicle communications) in an ad hoc manner and also with roadside base stations using so-called dedicated short range communication links. Research on technology related to vehicular networks is being conducted by many universities and is being widely reported in the mainstream media as well. Vehicular networks are thus expected to become an important part of community networks of the future. In this paper we will survey the different types of dissemination of information and the assurance of such information in vehicular networks. The paper will discuss the architecture of vehicular networks, classify different types of information exchange (safety, traffic related, and content) and different methods of information exchange (opportunistic exchange of resources between vehicles, vehicle assisted data delivery, cooperative downloading of information, etc.). Then we discuss information assurance issues in vehicular networks and survey the solutions proposed for ensuring authenticity/integrity of information, location privacy of vehicles, eviction of faulty or misbehaving vehicles from the information network (e.g., using reputation), etc.