Secure communication for advance metering infrastructure in smart grid

Abstract

The electrical power industry is in the process of integration with bidirectional information and power flow infrastructure commonly called smart grid. Advance metering infrastructure (AMI) is an important component of the smart grid in which data and signal is transferred from consumer smart meter to smart grid and vice versa. Cyber security is to be considered before implementing AMI applications. For delivering Smart meter data and manage message securely, there is a need of a unique security mechanism to ensure the integration of availability and privacy. In such security mechanisms, the cryptographic overhead, including certificates and signatures, is quite significant for an embedded device like a smart meter in smart grid AMI compared to normal personal computers in a regular enterprise network. Additionally, cryptographic operations contribute significant computational cost, when recipient end verifies the message in each communication. We proposed a light and flexible protocol for secure communication between smart meters and smart grid infrastructure. The proposed protocol authenticate both control center and smart meter and also securely exchange secret key (session key) between two entities for secure communication between them. Proposed protocol help to mitigate several types of attacks on smart grid by identifying the origin of attacks against AMI. The proposed protocol is tested for security and no attack was found. Its performance is also found to be better than existing mechanism.