Design and Analysis of Authentication Schemes for Remote Surveillance System in Smart Grid Infrastructure

Abstract

The recent advancement in the field of information and communication technology makes the smart grid an indispensable component of the Internet of Things (IoT). The Smart Grid (SG) is an electrical power generation and distribution system that includes variety of operations and functions in order to control and monitor the power supply network. The automation and distributed intelligence provide enhanced efficiency and stability to the Smart Grid (SG) and also provide two-way communication among the electric power consumer and provider. Despite of many advantages, the high dependency on wireless communication and networking systems makes the SG infrastructure exposed to different security threats like man-in-middle, replay and spoofing attacks etc. For these security concerns, there is a need for a strong communication mechanism for secure transfer of information among different entities in the SG. Thus, key agreement and authentication protocols are considered as the most suitable solution to fulfill the cyber-security requirements of the SG. In this thesis, we propose an identity-based authentication protocol for power supply-line surveillance in smart grid environment using physical un-cloneable function. The performance analysis shows that our protocol is adequate to resist various cyber-attacks and also resists the physical attacks on sensors. The proposed protocol is efficient as it incurs very less computation cost as compared to various related protocols. While, the communication cost of devised protocol is slightly higher than some protocols but it also offers three added security features as compared to other related protocols.