Maximising anonymity of a vehicle
by Brijesh Kumar Chaurasia, Shekhar Verma
International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems (IJAACS), Vol. 3, No. 2, 2010

Abstract: A vehicle can be tracked through its transmission. The broadcast by a source contains its current identity and also allows estimation of its location by receivers of this transmission. This mapping between the physical entity and the location estimated from the communication broadcast is a threat to privacy. This article addresses the challenges in providing anonymity to a moving vehicle that continually switches identifiers. As a vehicle moves on a road, its neighbours change in accordance to its relative speed with neighbouring vehicles. This change in the nature and size of the neighbourhood, i.e. the anonymity set, reduces the anonymity of a vehicle. The work studies the possibility that a node may sustain or enhance its anonymity by changing its pseudonym in the vicinity of other vehicles to decorrelate the relation between its location and identity. A heuristic that allows a vehicle to switch its identity at a time and place where the potential of anonymity preservation can be maximised by increasing the anonymity set is proposed. Analytical and simulation results indicate that updating pseudonyms in accordance to the heuristic maximises the size of the anonymity set and through it, the anonymity of a vehicle.

Online publication date: Wed, 20-Jan-2010

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