Secure linear feedback shift register based IPv6 in VANET

Abstract

In this paper, Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) based IPv6 address generation has been proposed for low IP acquisition time during handoff in Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANET). The mechanism reduces handoff latency and packet loss rate by removing link layer address conflict and duplicate address detection (DAD). VANETs are characteristics by frequent handoffs that need regular address reconfiguration which increases the handoff latency. The latency increases further due to the need for DAD to prevent link layer address conflict. LFSR based IPv6 in VANET decreases the address reconfiguration time and handoff latency by providing a unique seed value in Router Advertisement (RA) which is generated through modified LFSR algorithm and is combined with vehicle's MAC ID to give a unique host ID. Since the mechanism is able to generate different unique host ID for same MAC ID, it eliminates the need of DAD by minimizing the probability of link layer address conflict to a negligible value. This also increases the IP configuration scalability. The algorithm only modifies the control signal RA and does not require any change in the VANET architecture. Simulation results confirm that this mechanism performs better than Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and can be incorporated as a standard IP acquisition technique for high mobility networks like VANET.