Performance Comparison Between Broadcast Authentication Methods for Vehicular Networks

For authenticating time critical broadcast messages, IEEE 1609.2 security standard for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) suggests the use of secure Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). Since ECDSA has an expensive verification in terms of time, most commonly suggested alternate algorithms are TESLA and signature amortization. Unfortunately, these algorithms lack immediate authentication and non-repudiation. Therefore, we introduce a probabilistic verification scheme for an ECDSA-based authentication protocol. Using ns2 simulation tools, we compare the performance of all above-mentioned broadcast authentication algorithms. The results show with our proposed scheme, there is an increase in packet processed ratio over that of all the other algorithms.