Drivers' Anonymity with a Short Message Length for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications Network

In this paper, we propose a broadcast protocol to preserve drivers' anonymity in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications network using the keyed-hash message authentication code (HMAC). Future vehicle safety applications will allow vehicles to broadcast their safety-critical information to alert neighboring vehicles of possible collisions. Such safety applications has a very low bandwidth and low communication latencies. We propose to use the keyed-hash message authentication code (HMAC) to provide anonymity, authentication and message integrity. The advantages of HMAC over asymmetric cryptographic algorithms are faster processing speed and a shorter message length which makes it suitable for V2V communications. We show that the additional number of bytes to a broadcasted message in our proposed protocol is 49 bytes. The recipients of the broadcasted message can authenticate the sender and verify the integrity of the message without identifying the source. In case of a dispute, only a Trusted Authority can identify the source of broadcasted messages.