Post-Quantum Authentication for Emergency Messaging in 5G Vehicular Fog Networks

Towards 5G-enabled vehicular communication systems, message dissemination in a mobile, low-latency environment, like public safety, is critical to the timely and reliable delivery of emergency messages. It is well-known that classical cryptographic primitives such as RSA and ECC are no longer secure (feasible) in the future when QC is practical. Proposition 1 In the spirit of such observations, this paper provides a lightweight post-quantum authentication scheme for emergency message propagation in vehicular fog networks. The proposed technique relies on CRYSTALSDilithium, a NIST-standard post-quantum lattice-based digital signature scheme, to achieve quantum-safe authentication at low cost. The protocol has four phases: system initialization, vehicle emergency token generation, fog-level validation, and distributed revocation. It adopts a semi-trusted architecture consisting of certified On-Board Units (OBUs), roadside fog nodes, and a central authority. Empirical results show a 2.65 ms signing time, 1.43 ms verification time, and 3.2 KB token size, all leading to prototyping in 5G network real-time applications. Experimental results reveal >30% reduction of computational delay with lower communication overhead compared with other existing schemes and without sacrificing security. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves post-quantum security, scalable revocation, and the preservation of privacy in fog computing environments that are characterised by limited computing capability. This paper presents a practical, future-proof authentication model well-suited for emergency response in next-generation vehicular networks.