Introduction

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are self-organized networks built up from moving. Vehicular
Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) represent a rapidly emerging particularly challenging class of Mobile Ad
Hoc Networks (MANETs). VANETs are self-organizing communication networks built up from
traveling vehicles and characterized by very high speed and limited degrees of freedom in nodes
movement patterns. VANETs require the definition of specific networking techniques whose feasibility
and performance are tested by means of simulation.
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are important module for the development of Intelligent
Transportation System. Due to the features of VANET, data dissemination is an important issue that
has to be addressed. The protocol is used to approximation the density of vehicles on a given road. As
in any clustering algorithm, the formation of the cluster and the use of the bandwidth are important
tasks.
In this category intelligent ways are defined in order to use VANETS and integrate multiple ad-hoc
network Technologies such as WiFi IEEE 802.11 and Zigbee. Hence, easy accurate, effective and
simple communication can be obtain among vehicles. Various wireless technologies can be
implemented in vehicular Ad-hoc Networks such as Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC)
that can be considered as a type of WiFi.
In VANETs, the types of communication are the following:

 Vehicle-to-Vehicular (V-V) or Inter-Vehicular Communication.

 Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V-I) or Vehicle-to- Roadside Communication.

 Inter Roadside Communication

VANET can be characterized by following factors:
• Dynamic topology- The speed and direction of vehicles changes constantly thereby resulting in high
dynamic topology
• Intermittent connectivity- Connectivity between devices changes very frequently like connection
between two devices exchanging information can disconnect anytime. The reason behind frequent
disconnection is high dynamic topology.
• Mobility Patters: A large section of vehicles follow a certain patterns to move which is generally a
function of traffic signals, speed limits, highways, streets, road conditions etc. These patterns when
observed help in the creation of routing protocols for VANET.
• Unlimited power and storage: It is assumed that the nodes in VANET are capable of possessing an
unlimited amount of power as well as storage capacity. Therefore, the nodes are free to exchange the
data without the foundations of power consumption or storage wastage.
• On board sensors: VANET assumes that the nodes are seldom equipped with on board sensors which
are capable of transmission of information to other devices or nodes.
Body Architecture
A simple VANET architecture consists of moving vehicles communicating with other vehicle in the
range as well as the vehicle communicating with some nearby Road Side Units (RSU). A VANET is
differ from MANET in the aspect that the vehicles do not move randomly as in MANETs, rather in
VANET the moving vehicles follow some rules and pathway such as roads or highway.

Fig 1. VANET architecture

The architecture can be break down into three modules namely Mobile unit domain, Infrastructure
domain and Management domain.
1. Mobile Unit Domain
The Mobile unit domain consist of the mobile unit like the vehicle fitted with intelligent system, mobile
users etc. In this domain the communication happens mainly by two ways first by using V2C
communication model i.e. communication between vehicle to vehicle, second by using V2I
communication model i.e communication between vehicles to infrastructure.
2. Infrastructure Domain
The Infrastructure domain mainly contains the Road side units (RSU) and other transceivers which are
implemented to support the vehicle communication. Here the communication happens by using V2I
communication model.
3. Management Domain
The Management domain consists of the management systems like the servers and surveillance
applications. Whenever a message comes to the server about any accident or traffic slow down problem,
the server send alert message back to other in coming vehicle in the range. This information is very
useful for the vehicle to tackle the situation.
Routing Protocol
1. Topology-based protocol: In proactive routing protocols for each node, routing information are
stored in a routing table. Since nodes are highly mobile, routing entries regarding nodes leaving the
network and new nodes joining the network must be kept up to date. As a result, whenever a node joins
or leaves the network or when a link is broken or established a proactive protocol initiates an update
step in order to keep routing tables of all nodes up to date and ready to use. Consequently, this process
will increase the overhead of the protocol and will affect the network throughput. Many proactive
protocols have been proposed such as Destination Sequence Distance Vector (DSDV), Optimized Link
State Routing (OLSR) and Fisheye State Routing (FSR).
DSDV protocol is based on the shortest path algorithm where a routing table is maintained by each
node that is used to store routing information to every other node in the network.
In topology-based protocol, a link must be established from source node to destination node before data
transmission. Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV) is a typical representative of this
type. It will send a large quantity of redundant data packets and increase routing overhead by blind
Flood.
2. Position-based protocol: In position-based protocol needs no fixed link before data transmission,
every hop between source and destination can be selected instantaneously and independently. Greedy
Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) takes no measure to update the neighbour table and the destination
position but it has two shortcomings. Firstly, the neighbour table may be not match the actual position
without considering the node mobility. Secondly, the position of destination has never updated after
encapsulating in the data packets. In this category, there is no need to maintain information about
topology, route maintenance and discovery. Hence, location and packet forwarding are the major fields
of transmitted packets. Protocols in category are based on determining the speeds and direction of
movement of intermediate nodes in order to obtain correct routing information.
Distance Routing Effect Algorithm for mobility (DREAM), Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing
(GPSR) and Reliability Improving Position-based Routing (RIPR) are examples of protocols in this
category.
3. Map-based protocol: In map-based protocol is applied seldom at the present. It uses the GPS system
and digital map to select the best route. Another protocol that falls under this category is DSR. DSR is
based on two processes; route discovery and route maintenance. When a non-existing route to
destination is required. The source node initiate route discovery process. Thus, a route request message
is to the neighbours of the source node. Then, these nodes broadcast the route request message until a
node with a direct link to the destination is found. Worth noting, every node is capable of knowing
about new nodes and failures of node when receiving information packets. Since these packets store
information about the list of nodes that have been visited on a specific route, every on route node can
use this piece of information to delete nodes that have failed and store new nodes in their cache. Since
this protocol is based on a tree structure, the route reply message is broadcasted by neighbours only if
the message is coming from a higher level to a lower level in the tree. Otherwise, the message
broadcasted by the destination will be discarded and rejected by the neighbours.
VANET Security Overview
Safety in VANETs is of special concern because human lives are constantly at stake whereas in
traditional networks the major security concerns include confidentiality, integrity and availability none
of which involves primarily with life safety. Vital information cannot be neither modified nor deleted
by an attacker. Nonetheless, security in VANET also indicates the ability to determine the driver
responsibility while maintaining driver privacy. Information about the vehicles and their drivers within
must be exchanged securely and more importantly, timely in that the delay of message exchange may
cause catastrophic consequences such as collision of vehicles.

Classification of Attacks
VANETs are exposed to various threats and attacks. Since the vehicle itself is a sufficient source of
electricity, OBU does not have to bear the bottleneck of limited battery life like other mobile devices
such as smart phones and wearable devices. Therefore, we can integrate all kinds of processors and
chips into the OBU to grant the vehicle workstation-scale computing capability. Unfortunately, this
advantage is only one side of the coin. Such computational capability also enables attacks that are
computationally intensive and are not feasible in normal ad-hoc networks.
Therefore, it is necessary to classify the attacks in VANET because the unique nature of VANET that
brings unique vulnerabilities and various kinds of attacks that requires significant computing. The
classification and typical attacks are presented in figure 2. The classification categorize an attack based
the security requirement it tries to compromise. The major categories are threat and attacks on
Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. Other categories include attacks on authentication and
accountability.

Fig 2. VANET attacks and classification

APPLICATIONS
The concept of VANET when deployed in real world scenarios provide numerous advantageous
applications.
1. Safety Oriented Applications: These applications are developed to increase the safety of road and
other users. This area plays a crucial role in saving lives of human beings as majority of accidents and
loss of lives takes place because of collisions or lack of safety while driving. Three major applications
are explained as:
• Collision avoidance: in case an accident occurs, a signal is generated and is transmitted to other
vehicles via multi hop so that other vehicles stay away from that place and does not create chaos in the
emergency area. This information can be in form of vehicle speed, direction, route etc.
• Cooperative driving: Information such as speed hike or limit, sharp turn, road conditions etc. when
shared among various users can result in an optimized journey of vehicles without the fear of any critical
situations. Most of the critical situations occur when drivers fail to coordinate among themselves.
VANET solves this problem by providing a way of communication to drivers and other users.
• Traffic optimization: In VANET, data gathering is done by the vehicles. In cases when some critical
situations arises, a signal warning the other drivers can be propagated to drivers in distant locations so
that they don’t arrive at the same place and cause more congestion. By warning vehicles about such
situations can result in optimization of traffic and other congestions.
2. Infotainment applications: Such applications facilitate the drivers and other users by providing
various messages that aim to offer entertainment related and other information to them such as
information regarding nearest car repair station, coffee shop, parking lot etc. It is divided into types of
applications:
• Cooperative applications: Information provided but the local nearby nodes such as interest
notification, media downloading etc.
• Global internet applications: Here the data is obtained globally via internet. For example, insurance/
finance services, parking management services etc.
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