Citation: Abdulsattar, N.F.; Mohammed, D.A.; Alkhayyat, A.; Hamed, S.Z.; Hariz, H.M.; Abosinnee, A.S.; Abbas, A.H.; Hassan, M.H.; Jubair, M.A.; Abbas, F.H.; et al. Privacy-Preserving Mobility Model and Optimization-Based Advanced Cluster Head Selection (P2O-ACH) for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. Electronics 2022, 11, 4163. https:// doi.org/10.3390/electronics11244163 Academic Editors: Joseph Bamidele Awotunde, Ali Ahmed and Tarek Gaber Received: 8 October 2022 Accepted: 25 November 2022 Published: 13 December 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). electronics Article Privacy-Preserving Mobility Model and Optimization-Based Advanced Cluster Head Selection (P2O-ACH) for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Nejood Faisal Abdulsattar 1 , Dheyaa Abdulameer Mohammed 1 , Ahmed Alkhayyat 2,3 , Shemaha Z. Hamed 4 , Hussein Muhi Hariz 5 , Ali S. Abosinnee 6 , Ali Hashim Abbas 1, * , Mustafa Hamid Hassan 1 , Mohammed Ahmed Jubair 1 , Fatima Hashim Abbas 7 , Abeer D. Algarni 8 , Naglaa F. Soliman 8,9 and Walid El-Shafai 10,11 1 College of Information Technology, Imam Ja’afar Al-Sadiq University, Al-Muthanna 66002, Iraq 2 College of Technical Engineering, The Islamic University, Najaf 54001, Iraq 3 Department of Medical Instruments Engineering Techniques, Al-Turath University College, Baghdad 10021, Iraq 4 Department of Medical Instruments Engineering Techniques, Al-Farahidi University, Baghdad 10011, Iraq 5 Computer Engineering Department, Mazaya University College, Nasiriya 64001, Iraq 6 Altoosi University College, Najaf 54001, Iraq 7 Medical Laboratories Techniques Department, Al-Mustaqbal University College, Hillah 51001, Iraq 8 Department of Information Technology, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, P.O. Box 84428, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia 9 Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt 10 Security Engineering Lab, Computer Science Department, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh 11586, Saudi Arabia 11 Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering, Faculty of Electronic Engineering, Menoufia University, Menouf 32952, Egypt * Correspondence: alsalamy1987@gmail.com Abstract: In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), due to the fast-moving mobile nodes, the topology changes frequently. This dynamically changing topology produces congestionand instability. To overcome this issue, privacy-preserving optimization-based cluster head selection (P2O-ACH) is proposed. One of the major drawbacks analyzed in the earlier cluster-based VANETs is that it creates a maximum number of clusters for communication that leads to an increase in energy consumption which reflects in a degradation of the performance. In this paper, enhanced rider optimization algorithm (ROA)-based CH selection is performed and that optimally selects the CH so that effective clusters are created. By analyzing this, the behavior of the bypass rider’s CH is chosen, and this forms the optimized clusters, and during the process of transmission, privacy-preserving mobility patterns are used to secure the network from all kinds of malfunctions which are performed by the new vehicle blending and migration process. The proposed P2O-ACH is simulated using NS-2, and for performance analysis, two scenarios are taken, which contain a varying number of vehicles and varying speeds. For a varying number of vehicles and speeds, the considered parameters are energy efficiency, energy consumption, network lifetime, packet delivery ratio, packet loss, network latency, network throughput, and routing overhead. From the results, it is understood that the proposed method performed better when compared with earlier work, such as GWO-CH, ACO-SCRS, and QMM-VANET. Keywords: ROA optimization; CH selection; privacy-preserving; VANETs security; mobility model 1. Introduction Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a type of mobile ad hoc network (MANETs), and their main motivation is to control accidents and obtain better road safety. VANETs Electronics 2022, 11, 4163. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11244163 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics