Home Area Network Research Articles

PAINT: Priority aware interference mitigation techniques for improving coexistence in home area networks of smart grid

SummaryAs smart grid (SG) home area networks (HANs) communicate with various smart devices such as meters, sensors, and actuators on a 2.4‐GHz unlicensed band, the coexistence of different wireless technologies in such networks is a common phenomenon due to the overlapping of channels. In this research, homogeneous and heterogeneous interference are considered to address the coexistence problem in smart utility networks (SUNs). The homogeneous interference is mitigated by utilizing the contention free period (CFP) and the contention access period (CAP) of the MAC layer superframe of IEEE 802.15.4g designed for SUNs. This frame is used to get access for the channel. For this, a slotted CSMA/CA algorithm is used for various priority levels of data with adjustable backoff period (BP) and clear channel assessment (CCA) period in order that nodes (devices) with high priority can achieve high probability of channel access. By modeling the proposed scheme using the Markov chain, the exactness of the proposed scheme is assessed based on throughput, channel access delay, energy consumption per bit, and probability of successful data transmission and collision. A performance evaluation of the proposed scheme is further investigated by comparing it with the existing scheme PA‐MAC. In addition, a channel switching mechanism is explored to mitigate the heterogeneous interference with the help of a Naive Bayes classifier prediction. Finally, the prediction indicates that by choosing the non‐coexisting and the non‐overlapping channel, the proposed channel switching mechanism effectively mitigates the heterogeneous interference.

A Review of Cognitive Radio Smart Grid Communication Infrastructure Systems

The cognitive smart grid (SG) communication paradigm aims to mitigate quality of service (QoS) issues in obsolete communication architecture associated with the conventional electrical grid. This paradigm entails the integration of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) into power grids, enabling a two-way flow of information. However, due to the exponential increase in wireless applications and services, also driven by the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) smart devices, SG communication systems are expected to handle large volumes of data. As a result, the operation of SG networks is confronted with the major challenge of managing and processing data in a reliable and secure manner. The existing works in the literature proposed architectures with the objective to mitigate the underlying QoS issues such as latency, bandwidth, data congestion, energy efficiency, etc. In addition, a variety of communication technologies have been analyzed for their capacity to support stringent QoS requirements for diverse SGs environments. This notwithstanding, a standard architecture designed to mitigate the aforementioned issues for SG networks remains a work-in-progress. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the emerging technologies such as cognitive radio networks (CRNs) as part of the Fifth-Generation (5G) mobile technology for reliable communication in SG networks. Furthermore, a hybrid architecture based on the combination of fog computing and cloud computing is proposed. In this architecture, real-time latency-sensitive information is given high priority, with fog edge based servers deployed in close proximity to home area networks (HANs) for preprocessing and analyzing of information collected from smart IoT devices. In comparison to the recent works in the literature, which are mainly based on CRNs and 5G separately, the proposed architecture in this paper incorporates the combination of CRNs and 5G for reliable and efficient communication in SG networks.

A Situation-Aware Scheme for Efficient Device Authentication in Smart Grid-Enabled Home Area Networks

Home area networks (HANs) are the most vulnerable part of smart grids since they are not directly controlled by utilities. Device authentication is one of most important mechanisms to protect the security of smart grid-enabled HANs (SG-HANs). In this paper, we propose a situation-aware scheme for efficient device authentication in SG-HANs. The proposed scheme utilizes the security risk information assessed by the smart home system with a situational awareness feature. A suitable authentication protocol with adequate security protection and computational and communication complexity is then selected based on the assessed security risk level. A protocol design of the proposed scheme considering two security risk levels is presented in the paper. The security of the design is verified by using both formal verification and informal security analysis. Our performance analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is efficient in terms of computational and communication costs.

An Energy Efficient Network Architecture and Spectrum Sharing Technique for Cognitive Radio Based Smart Grid Communications

With the introduction of an automated electric power system known as smart grid, issues relating to power quality, shortages and inefficiency have been solved. Two vital foundations necessary for the sustainability and the stability of Smart Grids (SG) are a resourceful and reliable communication between users in a smart grid network and an energy efficient Smart Grid Communication Network (SGCN) architecture. On the other hand, Cognitive radios (CR) are equipped with the capability of exploiting unused licensed spectrum resources for effective spectrum utilization. The objective of this paper is to integrate cognitive radio into smart grid communication network in order to make the network a lot smarter and provide spectrum sharing solutions in SGCN. In this paper, an energy efficient SGCN architecture that is layered into the Home Area Network (HAN), Neighbourhood Area Network (HAN) and the Wide Area Network (WAN) has been proposed. Furthermore, in order to achieve a fair spectrum sharing amongst users in the network, CR users in the HANs estimate the need of its neighbouring users to transmit data. Then it uses this information to predict the vacant channels that will be utilized by any node in the network using a Markov chain process. In the NANs, a model is also proposed where every user sensor node access the spectrum based on the buffer occupancy estimates of its neighboring nodes. Simulation results show that there is a higher throughput in the network and also an increase in the quantity of data packets successfully transmitted using the proposed model.

Security Assumptions for Ubiquitous Secure Smart Grid Infrastructure using 2 Way Peg Blockchain and Fuzzy Specifications

The smart grid cyber-physical system and advanced metering infrastructure is an immensely growing term in industrial research based on the electrical power grid system and has uncovered an efficient paradigm for the power generation, transmission, and for the expenditure management as well. These systems allow home area networks and advanced metering infrastructure to communicate bi-directionally. False data injection is a new and climacteric security threat to the power grid to tamper such important data. However, these communication channels that the energy service interfaces provide two-way communication according to the central control unit. Thus, for the security and robustness of the grid, it is critical to separate the false or infected data. The existing protocol on this problem is based on state estimation which is less secure and computationally expensive. In this paper, we propose a 2-way peg blockchain security system by providing a digital signature scheme between home area network device (Smart Meter) and AMI server to get authorization, providing an infected data detection algorithm based on fuzzy rule specification and 2WP based blockchain protocol and finally infected performance reputation updating algorithm by computing the probability distribution of uncouth level to detect the infected or compromised the. We get more efficiency and security by performing a detailed analysis.

Differentiation between Bellman-Ford and Dijsktra Algorithm in Routing Protocols

The modus operandi of congregating data pre-owned by home area network (HAN) protocols in order to deliver data across confined or extensive distance connection and that which is transmittal over a digital network in the form of packets is called as packet switching. Packet switching necessitates packaging of data in meagre units (packets) that are routed through a network, based on destination address contained within each packet and with the usage of network switches and routers. In packet switching networks, routing is the Avant-graded and multifaceted resolution maker, that controls the direction of network packets from their source in the vicinity of their destination through intermediate network nodes by precise packet advancing techniques. Here, in this disquisition we made an interpretation apropos the dyad pre-eminent shortest path (closest distance) searching algorithms, which are used in routing. They’re the BELLMAN-FORD and DIJKSTRA’S algorithm. The anatomization of the differentiation between the two is given concisely.

Trust and Cryptography Centered Privileged Routing Providing Reliability for WSN Considering Dos Attack Designed for AMI of Smart Grid

Sheltered communication is a precise significant concern in any kind of network. This research focuses on secure and reliable wireless message arrangement. Through relating trust based and cryptography based approach we can progress wireless communication security and reliability effectually of Advanced Metering Infrastructure. Wireless Sensor Network used as a communiqué arrangement for AMI.Nodes(Sensors) are employed intended for a Home Area Network around 10-60.The performance of security and reliability calculated through energy depletion, delay, packet transfer ratio or packet delivery ratio (PDR),throughput and overhead of the sensor nodes. Diverse categories of attacks arises on wireless communication infrastructure. This research deliberated Denial of Service (DoS) type attack. Through linking Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for secure routing and authenticated anonymous secure routing (AASR) for reliable route routing tries to improve reliability and security of wireless communication infrastructure of AMI using NS2(Network Simulator2) simulation platform. Operative routing delivers radical change in enactment of wireless communication infrastructure. Proposed AASR protocol and ECC protocol admirably delivers virtuous results compared to surviving protocols.

Analysis and Development of Efficient DSM Engine for Smart Industrial Based on Big Data and IoT

Savvy social orders have an expanding interest for quality-arranged administrations and framework in an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) worldview. Savvy urbanization faces various difficulties. Among them, made sure about vitality Demand Side Management (DSM) is of specific concern. The IIoT renders the mechanical frameworks to malware, digital assaults, and other security chances. The IIoT with the mixture of Big Data investigation can give effective answers for such difficulties. This paper proposes a made sure about and trusted multi-layered DSM motor for a shrewd social society utilizing IIoT-based Big Data examination. The proposed motor uses an incorporated way to deal with accomplish ideal DSM over a Home Area Network (HAN). To upgrade the security of this motor, a payload-based confirmation conspire is used that depends on a lightweight handshake component. Our proposed strategy uses the lightweight highlights of Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) to encourage the customers in observing different assets dwelling over the worker in a vitality productive way. Likewise, information streams are handled utilizing Big Data examination with MapReduce equal preparing. The proposed confirmation approach is assessed utilizing NetDuino Plus 2 loads up that yield a lower association overhead, memory utilization, reaction time and a vigorous safeguard against different vindictive assaults.

Blockchain for IOT-based NANs and HANs in Smart Grid

Smart Grid – an intelligent connected grid consisting of millions of smart devices, used to collect data from the grid to improve the efficiency of its operation. These smart devices communicating wirelessly are susceptible to attacks and hence the security and privacy of the smart devices along with the smart grid is a major challenge. Blockchain-based systems provide improved security and privacy and hence gained a lot of attention in the recent past. This paper proposes a blockchain-based architecture for Neighborhood Area Networks (NANs) and Home Area networks (HANs) in Smart Grid. The paper presents a security analysis in terms of confidentiality, integrity and availability to show that the proposed blockchain-based Smart Grid architecture is secure. Also, the impact of the improved security on packet delays, energy and computational overhead is discussed.

Fusion-On-Field Security and Privacy Preservation for IoT Edge Devices: Concurrent Defense Against Multiple Types of Hardware Trojan Attacks

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have connected millions of houses around the globe via the internet. In the recent past, threats due to hardware Trojan (HT) in the integrated circuits (IC) have become a serious concern, which affects IoT edge devices (IoT-ED). In this paper, the possibility of the IoT-ED with embedded HT that can cause serious security, privacy, and availability problems to the IoT based Home Area Network (HAN) has been discussed. Conventional network attack detection techniques work at the network protocol layers, whereas IoT-ED with HT can lead to the peculiar manifestation of attack at the physical and/or firmware level. On the other hand, in the IC design, most of the HT-based attack detection techniques require design time intervention, which is expensive for many of the IoT-ED and cannot guarantee 100% immunity. The argument in this paper is that the health of modern IoT-ED requires a final line of defense against possible HT-based attacks that goes undetected during IC design and test. The approach is to utilize power profiling (PP) and network traffic (NT) data without intervening into the IC design to detect malicious activity in HAN. The proposed technique is to effectively identify multiple attacks concurrently and to differentiate between different types of attacks. The IoT-ED behaviors for five different types of random attacks have been studied, including covert channel, DoS, ARQ, power depletion, and impersonation attacks. Data fusion has been leveraged by combining the PP and NT data and is able to detect, without design time intervention, each of the five attacks individually with up to 99% accuracy. Moreover, the proposed technique can also detect all the attacks concurrently with 92% accuracy. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first work where multiple HT based attacks are concurrently detected in IoT-ED without requiring any design time intervention.

Congruent routing protocols in diverse tree topology ZigBee built home area networks

At the residential level, the important services of smart grid namely Advanced metering infrastructure and Demand response are accomplished by the smart energy devices such as smart electrical appliances and smart meters to support dynamic price, bill, control from the utility and export of surplus power. To enhance the quality and reliability of smart grid services and power dispatch, ZigBee built smart energy home area networks are deployed as the last hop of smart grid networks to collect real-time home data. However, routing is the major issue in determining the efficacy of such networks. Moreover, ZigBee employs a tree addressing scheme that helps in assigning unique address to each node in network. This paper evokes congruent routing protocols such as ZigBee shortcut tree routing (ZSTR), ZigBee opportunistic STR, ZigBee directional OSTR, Energy Potent STR for tree topology and a Linear path cluster tree routing for long thin tree topology. Exclusively, this paper proposes a new routing named Energy potent ZigBee directional opportunistic short-cut routing and show its performances in routing, congestion management, bandwidth utilization enhancement, network lifetime expansion and power consumption reduction comparatively with other five diverse routings.

The Design of an Experimental Model for Deploying Home Area Network in Smart Grid

The Design of an Experimental Model for Deploying Home Area Network in Smart Grid

Modeling Secure Home Area Network Based on IoT for Resource Constraints Environment

The Internet of things (IoT) can be used in our daily life. Home area network (HAN) is one of the applications of loT. However, deploying HAN for underdeveloped countries in Africa is not easy due to the lack of Internet connectivity and stable electricity. First of all, Internet in Africa is growing fast but the majority of countries in Africa have Internet penetration of less than 10%. Furthermore, the problem of accessing electricity varies greatly across African countries, which is still less than 30% of the average usage rate. The aim of this paper is to model a secure HAN based on IoT for resource constraints environment, which are focused on both network connectivity and energy stability. Poor connectivity, the prevalence of low-end devices and several other obstacles should be considered for the secure HAN deployment in developing and underdeveloped countries. The proposed HAN model will provide the resource constraints module composed of network connectivity function and energy stability function to support the two constraints based on the IoT basic module and the security and privacy module. The proposed HAN model could be securely applied to various countries HAN applications with poor electricity supply and network connectivity.

Examination of The Impact of Smart Grid Technologies For Energy Saving Potential on Residential Buildings In India

India, a developing country has targeted 9% growth rate, its yearly power generation has increased to 6.5% per year from 2011 to 2017. It is due to the fast urbanization and increase in building occupied area. However, India is experiencing energy scarcity nowadays. The power generation can’t able to satisfy the demand to withstand its growth rate in future. Therefore, this study investigates some technologies for connecting residential buildings to the Smart Grid, to minimize electricity consumption. It can be achieved by optimizing consumer’s devices through interface with Home Area Networks (HANs), Smart Grid-connected home machines diagnostics, and enhanced capability to aim and adopt energy efficiency agendas. These tactics create impacts on energy conservation that influencing the initial investment on new generation.

A Key Agreement Scheme for Smart Homes Using the Secret Mismatch Problem

To secure the communications of home area networks, cryptographic keys need to be established between smart home devices. Though many key agreement schemes have been proposed, they cannot be directly implemented, due to the reason that in some applications, smart home devices have no access to the online trusted third party. Moreover, in certain scenarios, the smart home devices are manufactured by different factories. As a result, it is a challenge to securely establish the communication keys using the secrets preloaded by different factories. A few key agreement schemes are designed without using the online trusted third party and the preloaded secrets. However, there are some problems in these schemes. In this article, we improve these schemes and design a key agreement scheme for smart homes such that the devices can automatically and securely establish the communication key. Specifically, our scheme is designed by making use of the secret mismatch problem (exists in the physical layer secret extraction schemes). We prove the security of the proposed scheme and present a prototype implementation. Additionally, we analyze the performance of our scheme and compare it with that of other related works. The comparison shows that our key agreement scheme can fix the problems in the related works, however, it introduces some extra communication consumptions.

Home energy management system (HEMS): concept, architecture, infrastructure, challenges and energy management schemes

With the rapid advancements in technologies like smart grid, network communication, information infrastructures, bidirectional communication medium’s, energy conservation methodologies and diverse techniques, Home area networks (HANs) have undergone a revolutionary change pertaining to various areas of power consumption domains like electricity usage patterns, energy conservation at consumption premises, etc. Under a robust smart grid paradigm, modern home equipped with HEMS contributes significantly towards efficiency improvement, economizing energy usage, reliability, as well as conserving energy for distributed systems. The objective of the paper is to present a comprehensive review covering the various technical and conceptual aspects of efficient power management at home front. A systematic review proposed by several researchers till date in this area is considered. The study focuses on the concepts, technical background, architecture and infrastructure along with various schemes as well as goals including various issues and challenges faced with HEMS systems. The research paper proposes a novel methodology for improvising the home design architecture by incorporating the concept of green building in order to reduce the energy consumption done by a resident at their home front. The concept of HEM systems or SHEMS is not just about proposing new models to save energy, power management, or making energy efficient appliances to be used at home front but also about creating awareness among the consumers and motivating them to participate in the activities related to power conservation in active manner. The study have shown the, impact of various schemes over the peak load reduction with Optimization based residential energy management (OREM) technique showing the reduction in power consumption showing a cut down of about 35% in the overall electricity bill.

Positioning of blockchain mechanisms in IOT-powered smart home systems: A gateway-based approach

This paper reviews a number of existing smart home Internet of Thing (IoT) automation architectures, providing a credible appraisal of that environment, and, furthermore assesses the applicability of blockchain mechanisms to this use case. Specifically, the paper affords the conclusion that in most instances of home automation, a potential topological place to start the blockchain is in the home gateway that supports the processing and computing required to aggregate or in-network-preprocess the data flows from the various appliances; however, the computing and storage requirements may limit this deployment paradigm to a subset of cases. Alternatively, the place to start the blockchain could be in the fog-to-core gateway point, but in this case this process does not fully guarantee end-to-end integrity. The actual Proof of Work (PoW) functionality would likely be in the core network and not in the relatively low computing-power home gateway. Another alternative envisions private local blockchains to be instituted in the home area network, but still not necessarily for all appliance-generated transactions due to the large volume of such status, event, and usage data.

An Energy-efficient Cognitive Radio Based Smart Grid Communication Network Architecture

With the introduction of an automated electric power system known as smart grid, issues relating to power quality, shortages and inefficiency has been solved, One vital foundation necessary for the sustainability and stability of smart grid (SG) is a secured, reliable, stable and efficient communication network infrastructure. The aim of this paper is to examine smart grid communication networks (SGCN) and propose a SGCN architecture that is energy efficient with the integration of cognitive radio technology. The SGCN architecture is layered into the Home Area Network (HAN), Neighbourhood Area Network (HAN) and the Wide Area Network (WAN) and each layer is analyzed. The paper also examine the motivation behind the employment of CR in SGCN and the challenges involved in designing an effective and reliable SGCN Infrastructure.

Practical Model Checking of a Home Area Network System: Case Study

The integrated communication infrastructure is the core of the Smart Grid architecture. Its two-way communication and information flow provides this network with all needed resources in order to control and manage all connected components from the utility to the customer side. This latter, named the Home Area Network or HAN, is a dedicated network connecting smart devices inside the customer home, and using different solutions. In order to avoid problems and anomalies along the process life cycle of developing a new solution for HAN network, the modeling and validation is one of the most powerful tools to achieve this goal. This paper presents a practical case study of such validation. It intends to validate a HAN SDL model, described in a previous work, using model checking techniques. It introduces a method to translate the SDL model to a Promela model using an intermediate format IF. After the generation of the Promela model, verification is performed to ensure that some functional properties are satisfied. The desired properties are defined in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), and DTSPIN (an extension of SPIN with discrete time) model checker is used to verify the correctness of the model.

Smart residential electricity distribution system (SREDS) for demand response under smart grid environment

The present research work attempts to develop a Smart Residential Electricity Distribution System (SREDS) for enabling Smart Residences (SR) to participate in Demand Response (DR) schemes of Power Distribution Company (PDC) with either Flat Rate tariff, Time of Use tariff or Real Time Pricing. SREDS includes a Smart Energy Meter (SEM) enabled with Internet of Things, an Intelligent Residential Load Management System (IRLMS) with Wi-Fi connectivity, distributed Wi-Fi enabled Smart Load Nodes (SLN) and Smart Battery Charing/Discharging Controller (SBCDC). The SEM receives the key parameters such as electricity pricing, maximum demand limit, etc. as per the DR schemes from the PDC through Meter Data Management System (MDMS) using Internet. IRLMS receives the required operational timings of the loads as per the desire and comfort of the user either through the user interface or from the SLN connected to the appliances participating in DR. If the SR is equipped with battery storage system, then the battery units are interfaced with the IRLMS through SBCDC. The present status of the battery is communicated to IRLMS by SBCDC. The communication between SEM, IRLMS, SLNs and SBCDC is established through Home Area Network using Wi-Fi. The IRLMS processes the PDC parameters and load requirements, and executes an optimization algorithm to find the best possible scheduling of appliances in order to get minimized electricity bill. The SEM communicates back the energy consumption data to the PDC through MDMS.