Towards Secure Communication in CR-VANETs Through a Trust-Based Routing Protocol

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) promise efficient spectrum utilization by operating over the unused frequencies where Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) facilitate information exchanging among vehicles to avoid accidents, collisions, congestion, etc. Thus, CR enabled vehicular networks (CR-VANETs), a thriving area in wireless communication research, can be the enabler of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and autonomous driver-less vehicles. Similar to others, efficient and reliable communication in CR-VANETs is vital. Besides, security in such networks may exhibit unique characteristics for overall data transmission performance. For efficient and reliable communication, the proposed routing protocol considers the mobility patterns, spectrum availability, and trustworthiness to be the routing metrics. Hence, the protocol considers the vehicle's speed, mobility direction, inter-vehicles distance, and node's reliability to estimate the…