Hardware-Oriented Authentication for Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel authentication scheme for advanced metering infrastructure of smart grid using ring oscillator physically unclonable functions (ROPUFs). The scope of the design covers the communication between the utility company and the smart meter network. The scheme is based on hardware-oriented security and can be implemented on existing smart meters. Authentication keys of 64 bits are used for security level 1 communication. The size of keys can increase up to 1024 bits for security level 5. The cryptographic keys used in this scheme are extremely difficult to model by adversaries as each key is used only once. These authentication keys are generated from ROPUF response bits using the Hamming code. The design of the scheme ensures fault tolerance as ring oscillator comparison pairs with high frequency differences are selected to prevent bit flips and only 10% discrepancy is tolerated in parity bits. The proposed scheme is highly secure and efficient in terms of latency and data storage. As a proof of concept, two different machine learning algorithms, support vector machine and multigene genetic programming, are used to show that the scheme cannot be modeled by adversaries.