{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,18]],"date-time":"2026-03-18T23:37:59Z","timestamp":1773877079904,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":32,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"11","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,6,5]],"date-time":"2021-06-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1622851200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"This research was funded by Tecnol\u00f3gico de Monterrey, Escuela de Ingenier\u00eda y Ciencias, Av. General Ram\u00f3n Corona 2514, Zapopan, Jalisco 45201, M\u00e9xico","award":["Mx457801"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Mx457801"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Recently, by the rapid development of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) and the advancement of Software Defined Networking (SDN) as an emerging technology, the Software-Defined Vehicular Network (SDVN) has a tremendous attraction in the academia and research community. SDN\u2019s unique properties and features, such as its flexibility, programmability, and centralized control, make the network scalable and straightforward. In VANETs, traffic management and secure communication of vehicle information using the public network are the main research dimensions in the current era for the researchers to be considered while designing an efficient and secure VANETs architecture. This paper highlights the possible identified threat vectors and efficiently resolves the network vulnerabilities to design a novel and secure hierarchic architecture for SDVN. To solve the above problem, we proposed a Public Key Infrastructure-based digital signature model for efficient and secure communication from Vehicle to Vehicle. We also used the public key authority infrastructure for Vehicle to Infrastructure and the three-way handshake method for secure session creation and secure data communication in the SDN controller. The proposed security is validated through the well-known simulation tool AVISPA. Additionally, a formal security model is applied to validate the design hierarchic architecture\u2019s fundamental security properties for SDVN in an efficient and desirable way. In a comparative analysis, we prove that our proposed scheme fulfills all the essential security properties compared to other states of the art schemes.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s21113902","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,6,7]],"date-time":"2021-06-07T01:56:40Z","timestamp":1623031000000},"page":"3902","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":20,"title":["Towards the Design of Efficient and Secure Architecture for Software-Defined Vehicular Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"21","author":[{"given":"Muhammad","family":"Adnan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Technology, Hazara University Mansehra, Mansehra 21120, Pakistan"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5045-7485","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jawaid","family":"Iqbal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Technology, Hazara University Mansehra, Mansehra 21120, Pakistan"},{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Capital University of Science and Technology, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0974-6154","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Abdul","family":"Waheed","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Technology, Hazara University Mansehra, Mansehra 21120, Pakistan"},{"name":"School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5822-5550","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Noor Ul","family":"Amin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Technology, Hazara University Mansehra, Mansehra 21120, Pakistan"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6623-1758","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mahdi","family":"Zareei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences, Zapopan 45201, Mexico"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1843-0821","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Asif","family":"Umer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Technology, Hazara University Mansehra, Mansehra 21120, Pakistan"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5443-9711","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ehab Mahmoud","family":"Mohamed","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Wadi Addwasir 11991, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Aswan University, Aswan 81542, Egypt"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,6,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Borcoci, E. 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