Priority-based LTE down-link packet scheduling for Smart Grid communication

Secured gateway based communication in heterogeneous SM –neighbourhood area network in smart grid using FPGA design

In this paper, we present a signcryption scheme called CP_ABSC based on Ciphertext-Policy Attribute Based Encryption (CP_ABE)[7] to secure the multicast communications in smart grids that require access control, data encryption, and authentication to ensure message integrity and confidentiality. CP_ABSC provides algorithms for key management, signcryption, and designcryption. It can be used to signcrypt a message based on the access rights specified by the message itself. A user can designcrypt a ciphertext if and only if it possesses the attributes required by the access structure of the data. Thus CP_ABSC effectively defines a multicast group based on the access rights of the data specified by the data itself, which differs significantly from the traditional Internet based multicast where the destination group is predetermined and must be known by the data source. CP_ABSC provides collusion attack resistance, message authentication, forgery prevention, and confidentiality. It can be easily applied in smart grids to secure the instructions/commands broadcast from a utility company to multiple smart meters (push-based multicast) and the data retrieved from a smart meter to multiple destinations (pull-based multicast). Compared to CP_ABE, CP_ABSC combines encryption with signature at a lower computational cost for signcryption and a slightly higher cost in designcryption for signature verification. We also consider the adoption of attribute-based signature (ABS), and conclude that CP_ABSC has a much lower computational cost than ABS.

A survey on smart metering and smart grid communication

Smart Grids (SG) may be the most significant technological change in the history of electric grids, that can help curb the looming energy crisis worldwide, with intelligent generation, transmission and distribution of energy using a robust communication network. Power lines are a very promising solution for carrying data to serve as broadband access network in the context of SG, along with the wireless communication techniques. This paper investigates the design and simulation of a digital communication system optimized for Power Line Communication (PLC) in Smart Grids. For the proposed PLC transceiver, we consider Discrete Multitone (DMT) modulation based on a modified bit loading technique for the subcarriers. Our results reveal that the proposed incremental bit loading algorithm enhances data rate, and reduces computation time, as compared to the originally proposed incremental bit loading algorithm for PLC.

The smart metering and communication methods used in smart grid are being extensively studied owing to widespread applications of smart grid. Although the monitoring and control processes are widely used in industrial systems, the energy management requirements at both service supplier and consumer side for individuals promoted the evolution of smart grid. In this paper, it is aimed to disclose in a clear and clean way that what smart grid is and what kind of communication methods are used. The developing generation, transmission, distribution and customer appliances are discussed in terms of smart grid integration. The communication technologies are introduced as wire line and wireless classification where the key features are also tabulated.

Smart grid has become the hot topic to domestic and foreign about the development trend of power grid in recent years, and communication technology is foundation of the development of smart grid; the paper forecasts the smart grid communications automation and development trend.Further from intelligent dispatching center, smart grid, smart distribution grid and users, in view of the existing and emerging intelligent and automatic application were communication needs analysis, and provide a reliable basis for the smart grid communications planning.

Smart grids are electricity networks that can intelligently integrate the action of all connected users - producers, consumers, and prosumers (i.e., producers and consumers at the same time) - in order to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure electricity supplies. Smart grids rely on a two-way communication infrastructures in which energy measurement data taken at users located smart meters, as well as control information, must be exchanged in real-time or - at least - near real-time, while simultaneously guaranteeing a secure and privacy preserving communication. This paper addresses such a problem by presenting a distributed communication architecture that guarantees the privacy of fine-grained users data while enabling the energy supplier to access aggregate energy measurements and per-user coarse-grained data for billing purposes. The key idea underlying the proposed architecture is to adopt a secure multiparty computation method based on a verifiable secret sharing of the keys used by the smart meters to encrypt their sensitive data. This approach allows to remove the need for any intermediate aggregator element with clear benefits in terms of scalability and robustness.

Public-key cryptography (PKC) is widely used in smart grid (SG) communications to reduce the overhead of key management. However, PKC comes with its own problems in terms of certificate management. Specifically, certificate revocation lists (CRLs) need to be maintained and distributed to the smart meters (SMs) in order to ensure security of the communications. The size of CRLs may grow over time and eventually may introduce additional delay, bandwidth, and storage overhead when various applications are run on SG. In this paper, we propose novel algorithms for creating customized CRLs with reduced size for IEEE 802.11s-based advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) networks. Rather than maintaining a huge-size single CRL that introduces unnecessary search time and storage, the idea is to cluster/group SMs within the AMI network and create CRLs based on these groups. The grouping is mainly done in such a way that they bring together the SMs that will be very likely to communicate so that the CRLs will be kept local to that group. To this end, we propose two novel grouping algorithms. The first algorithm is a bottom-up approach, which is based on the existing routes from the SMs to the gateway. Since the SMs will be sending their data to the gateway through the nodes on the route, this forms a natural grouping. The second approach is a top-down recursive approach, which considers the minimum spanning tree of the network and then divides it into smaller subtrees. Via grouping, the length of the CRL for each SM and the corresponding distribution overhead can be reduced significantly. Simulation results have shown that our approach can maintain a balance between the size of the CRL and the number of signatures generated by CAs while guaranteeing security of the communications.

An efficient dependable smart power grid relies on the secure real-time data collection and transmission service provided by a monitoring system. In such a system, the measuring units, such as phasor measurement units (PMUs) and smart meters (SMs), are critical. These measuring equipments function as sensors in the smart grid. Data exchanges between these sensors and the central controller are protected by various security protocols. These protocols usually contain computationally intensive cryptographic algorithms that cause heavy energy overhead to the sensor nodes. Since PMUs and SMs are mostly energy-constrained, the problem of how to ensure the secure communication with minimum energy cost becomes a critical issue for the functionality of the whole smart grid. In this article, we focus on the low power secure communication of the PMUs and SMs. We take two wireless sensor platforms as examples to experimentally investigate the approaches and principles of reconciling the two conflicting system requirements-communication security and low energy consumptions. The proposed methods are general ones and applicable to other energy-constrained yet security sensitive systems.

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are aimed at combining the physical system with the cyber ones to provide a better control and improve the management of physical systems around us. Recently, the CPS and its applications, e.g., health-care and smart grid, have gained attention of the research community. In this paper, we consider the privacy aspect of users in a CPS, particularly in smart grid system as our use-case, and provide a mechanism that utilizes the advances in network coding to maintain data privacy. We address privacy issues associated with gathering metering information of clients in a smart grid system. In smart grid systems, wireless multi-hop communications are mainly used to gather metering information through exchanging data and control messages between smart meters and the utility. We argue that any communication paradigm used in a smart grid should support all aspects of privacy such as anonymity, unlinkability, unobservablity, and undetectablity. We propose innovative schemes for traffic routing and encryption that benefit from the enhanced network coding technology. Our analysis shows that our schemes maintain privacy of users despite the possibility of detecting metering data by an adversary. In addition, our scheme has extra favorable features such as less computation complexity, reliable, and robust communication.

A smart grid constitutes an electrical infrastructure that integrates communication technologies to optimize electricity production, distribution, and consumption. Within the smart grid, IEEE 802.11 networks play a crucial role in facilitating communication between smart meters and data collectors, operating within a shared transmission medium. However, a notable challenge arises due to the lack of certainty regarding the genuine identity of data recipients. In response, we present a solution—a novel covert channel leveraging the IEEE 802.11 backoff procedure—to transmit data that requires special protection. Implemented using the ns-3 simulator, our covert channel achieved a throughput of 140,000 bps when single covert station realized transmission in the wireless channel, and 880 bps in a populated environment characterized by high traffic volumes. This performance metric shows that our mechanism is better than other covert channels, where the performance in saturated conditions usually does not exceed several hundred bps. This covert channel represents a new approach to fortifying data integrity and privacy within smart grid communication.

Reducing the power supply-demand gap and increasing reliability of power supply are the challenges of current energy management. Implementation of smart grid, smart meters and smart metering can be a possible solution for power demand reduction, efficient power supply management, and optimization of management resource usages. Smart meters include sophisticated measurement and calculation hardware, software, calibration and communication capabilities. For interoperability within a smart grid infrastructure, smart meters are designed to perform functions, and store and communicate data according to certain standards. In this work we discuss smart meter and various elements of smart metering, current state of the technologies related to smart grid, smart meter, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and meter data flow in smart grid. We also discuss standards related to smart meter, meter data format and data transmission, functions of smart meter, and functionalities of smart meters, currently deployed by utilities around the world.

The notion of a “smart grid” results from the pressing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and replace the conventional power system with cutting-edge ICT infrastructures. A transparent technology with a two-way energy supply system is the smart grid. This state-of-the-art technology, an intelligent network, enables utilities to effectively and efficiently manage energy transmission to end users and give energy consumers the most control over their energy use. The fundamental goal of a smart grid is to ensure energy efficiency while involving end users in the power networks through smart meters and smart houses. Smart Grid uses information and communication technologies to collect real-time data and speed up decision-making. This study aims to provide light on the Smart Grid idea, its historical context and driving forces, the relationship between smart meters and smart grids, the current research agenda in this field, and case studies of its integration in various power systems throughout the world. Although there is no single definition for the term “smart grid,” this study will help describe the enabling technologies, research trends, and case studies of smart grid integration in power systems.

The advanced metering infrastructure of the smart grid presents the biggest growth potential in the machine-to-machine market today. Spurred by recent advances in M2M technologies, SG smart meters are expected not to require human intervention in characterizing power requirements and energy distribution. However, there are many challenges in the design of the SG communications network whereby the electrical appliances and smart meters are able to exchange information pertaining to varying power requirements. Furthermore, different types of M2M gateways are required at different points (e.g., at home, in the building, at the neighborhood, and so forth) of the SG communication network. This article surveys a number of existing communication technologies that can be adopted for M2M communication in SG. Among these, the most reliable technology to facilitate M2M communication in the SG home area network is pointed out, and its shortcoming is also noted. Furthermore, a possible solution to deal with this shortcoming to improve SG communications scalability is also presented.

In modern power grids, smart meters, as a type of consumer electronics, act as metering and communication nodes, which form Neighborhood Area Networks (NANs) spanning electricity distribution networks from substations to energy producers and consumers. In smart meter communication, wireless technologies have been widely adopted due to their inherent advantages of easier installation, flexibility, and low cost. For achieving low-latency communications in NANs, it is crucial to optimize the existing topology to enhance communication efficiency. However, optimizing the NAN topology is a challenging task due to the computational infeasibility of obtaining the optimal solution. To tackle this challenge, topology optimization in NANs is first formulated into a combinatorial optimization problem. After that, a heuristic solution driven by complex network theory is presented to solve the formulated optimization problem. The proposed heuristic solution consists of an effective network rewiring scheme and a long-range edge connection strategy. The rewiring optimizes the topology of wireless NANs to reduce local network length, whilst the long-range edge connection best pairs a small number of NAN nodes to reduce global network length. Numerical studies are conducted on diverse case studies to demonstrate the presented solution to enhance communication efficiency in smart grid NANs, outperforming the benchmark schemes.