A Cross-Layer Trust Evaluation Protocol for Secured Routing in Communication Network of Smart Grid

Cybersecurity is one of the major issues to be considered while designing a communication network for Smart Grid (SGCN). However, due to the openness and unpredictable nature of the wireless network, it is often prone to different adversarial attacks that exploit vulnerabilities to launch cross-layer attacks during data transmission. To address this issue, we proposed a novel trust-based routing framework with Bayesian Inference to calculate direct trust and Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory is used to compute the indirect trust by combining the evidence collected from reliable neighbours. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) calculates the node’s creditability trust by taking cross-layer metrics like transmission rate, buffering capacity and received signal strength. Further, the fuzzy theory is combined with BDS-AHP to incorporate fairness in utilizing cross-layer metrics for calculating the link trust to enable reliable routing. Extensive experiments are carried to evaluate the performance of the proposed fuzzy-based trusted routing algorithm (FBDS-AHP) with the presence of malicious nodes launching packet-dropping, bad-mouthing, on-off and Sybil attacks. Simulation result proves that the proposed trust evaluation algorithm achieves promising results in defending against these attacks thereby providing improved reliability and ensures secured routing in SGCN.