Enabling Vehicle-to-Vehicle Trust in Rural Areas: An Evaluation of a Pre-Signature Scheme for Infrastructure-Limited Environments

This research investigates the deployment and effectiveness of the novel Pre-Signature scheme, developed to allow for up-to-date reputation being available in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications in rural landscapes, where the communications infrastructure is limited. We discuss how existing standards and specifications can be adjusted to incorporate the Pre-Signature scheme to disseminate reputation. Addressing the unique challenges posed by sparse or irregular Roadside Units (RSUs) coverage in these areas, the study investigates the implications of such environmental factors on the integrity and reliability of V2V communication networks. Using the widely used SUMO traffic simulation tool, we create and simulate real-world rural scenarios. We have conducted an in-depth performance evaluation of the Pre-Signature scheme under the typical infrastructural limitations encountered in rural scenarios. Our findings demonstrate the scheme’s usefulness in scenarios with variable or constrained RSUs access. Furthermore, the relationships between the three variables, communication range, amount of RSUs, and degree of home-to-vehicle connectivity overnight, are studied, offering an exhaustive analysis of the determinants influencing V2V communication efficiency in rural contexts. The important findings are (1) that access to accurate Reputation Values increases with all three variables and (2) the necessity of Pre-Signatures decreases if the amount and range of RSUs increase to high numbers. Together, these findings imply that areas with a low degree of adoption of RSUs (typically rural areas) benefit the most from our approach.