Arithmetic optimization based secure intelligent clustering algorithm for Vehicular Adhoc Network.

Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) suffers from the loss of perilous data packets and disruption of links due to the fast movement of vehicles and dynamic network topology. Moreover, the reliability of the vehicular network is also threatened by malicious vehicles and messages. The malicious vehicle can promulgate fake messages to the node to misguide it, which may result in the loss of precious lives. In this situation, maintaining efficient, reliable, and secure communication among automobiles is of extreme importance, especially for a densely populated network. One of the remedies is vehicular clustering, which can effectively perform in a high-density network. However, secure cluster formation and cluster optimization are important factors to consider during the clustering process because non-optimal clusters may incur high end-to-end communication delays and produce overhead on the network. In addition, malicious nodes and packets reduce passenger and driver safety, increase road accidents, and waste passenger and driver time. To this end, we employ Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm (AOA) to design a secure intelligent clustering named AOACNET. AOA is used to achieve optimality of vehicular clusters. During cluster formation, the algorithm prevents unauthentic nodes from becoming cluster members by taking into consideration the performance value of each automobile. The vehicle's performance value is based on the record of data transmission. If a vehicle transmits a fake message, it will receive a penalty of (-1), and in the case of transmitting a legitimate message, a reward of (+1) will be assigned to the vehicle. Initially, all the vehicles have equal performance value which either increase or decrease based on communication with their peers. The vehicles will become cluster members only if their performance value is greater than the threshold value (0). AOACNET is tested in MATLAB using various evaluation metrics (i.e., number of clusters, load balancing, computational time, network overhead and delay). The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs up to 25% better than the similar contenders in terms of designated optimization objectives.