Toward a Secure Wireless-Based Home Area Network for Metering in Smart Grids

Compared to the conventional grid, the smart grid requires active participation of consumers to improve the quality and reliability of power delivery. The increase in consumer participation is expected from the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), commonly known as the smart meter, which has the capability of supporting various functions beyond that of recording energy usage. One of the primary objectives of the AMI is to allow load and cost management for the utility. This is envisioned partly through a communication system implemented between the smart meter and consumer equipment, currently deployed using wireless networking solutions such as ZigBee. Due to the shared nature of the wireless medium, however, these deployments face security challenges and interference issues, which must be addressed, taking into account the interests of both the utility company and the consumer. This work takes a comprehensive look at wireless security in the smart-meter-based home area network scenario and identifies possible vulnerabilities. Subsequently, some countermeasures are developed that can be used by both the utility company and the customer and are integrated into a common framework called SecureHAN that can be agreed to by both. In addition, the experiences from implementing the SecureHAN framework using commercial off-the-shelf hardware are described, including possible challenges.