Performance evaluation of user applications in the ITS scenario: An analytical assessment of the NeMHIP

摘要

Internet connectivity in the ITS context is a flourishing demand that has to be covered by efficient information and communication technologies. Thanks to the provision of this connectivity, not only end users will profit from communication services, but also services for controlling the operation of the vehicle will benefit from the Internet connectivity. Services related to the operation and control of the vehicles exchange sensitive data, so strong security properties have to be ensured for this type of services. In addition, because of the privacy concerns related to the end users, it is desired to provide this kind of services with an adequate security level. From the communication point of view, a vehicle can be regarded as a mobile network where nodes onboard obtain continuous and optimal Internet connectivity, so, its mobility has to be managed. In the same way, network mobility management protocols should not only avoid security leaks, but also they have to ensure an adequate security level. It is needless to say that the introduction of security properties cannot render not fulfilling service performance requirements. In fact, the trade-off between security and application performance is a must. ITS standardisation bodies have adopted the NEtwork Mobility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol to manage the mobility of networks. However, it still presents shortcomings like lack of security support and routing problems, which leads to a bad performance. One of the most promising design approaches is to consider a base mobility management protocol that provides out of the box security and route optimisation support like the Host Identity Protocol (HIP). Different solutions based on HIP can be found to solve network mobility in the literature, but none of these solutions aim at solving securely and efficiently network mobility management. That is, the provision of security properties to the network mobility management itself and to the end-to-end data communications while not increasing the signalling overhead and the manageability level remains unsolved. In this paper, we present the NeMHIP. NeMHIP is a secure and efficient network mobility management protocol which is based on HIP. In order to demonstrate its feasibility, we have carried out a study by means of analytical modelling to assess the performance of user applications with stringent QpS requirements like VoIP. Results demonstrate that the introduction of the NeMHIP in the ITS context is feasible because security properties are ensured while application performance requirements are satisfied. Therefore, we successfully achieve the trade-off between security and performance.