Patent ID: 8627073

Claim:
A method for distributing digital certificates in a vehicle-to-vehicle network, said method comprising: establishing wireless communications between two vehicles in the vehicle-to-vehicle network, where a first vehicle is transmitting messages and a second vehicle is receiving messages; employing a digital certificate by the first vehicle, where the digital certificate contains information which can be used to verify the authenticity of messages sent by the first vehicle over the vehicle-to-vehicle network; dividing the digital certificate into a group of source data segments to be encoded by the first vehicle; encoding the group of source data segments into a larger group of transmitted data segments by the first vehicle, where the encoding uses forward error correcting (FEC) codes, and where the transmitted data segments include FEC encoded digital certificate data; transmitting message packets over the vehicle-to-vehicle network by the first vehicle, where the message packets contain transmitted data segments and message data; receiving the message packets by the second vehicle, separating the message packets into received data segments and message data, and storing the received data segments and the message data associated with the received data segments; decoding the received data segments into a group of reconstructed data segments by the second vehicle when a sufficient number of message packets are received, where the reconstructed data segments include decoded digital certificate data; using the reconstructed data segments to create a reconstructed digital certificate by the second vehicle; using the reconstructed digital certificate by the second vehicle to verify the authenticity of the message packets; and using the message data by the second vehicle in an application.