HPDM: A Hybrid Pseudonym Distribution Method for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Protecting the location privacy of drivers is still one of the main challenges in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). The changing of pseudonym is commonly accepted as a solution to this problem. The pseudonyms represent fake vehicle identifiers. Roadside Units (RSUs) play a central role in the existing pseudonyms distribution solutions. Indeed, the VANET area should totally be covered by RSUs in order to satisfy the demand of vehicles in terms of pseudonyms. However, the total coverage is costly and hard to be achieved, especially in the first phase of VANETs deployment. In addition, RSUs could be overloaded due to the large number of pseudonyms requests that could be received from vehicles. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid pseudonyms distribution method, called HPDM that relies not only on RSUs but also on vehicles to perform the pseudonyms distribution. The analysis demonstrate that HPDM is privacy and accountability preserving. The performance evaluation of the proposed method is carried out using veins framework based on OMNet++ network simulator and SUMO mobility engine and shows its feasibility.