KMS–AMI: an efficient and scalable key management scheme for secure two-way communications in advanced metering infrastructure of smart grid

Abstract

Nowadays, it is evident that the traditional power grid system is changing to smart grid in a revolutionary and evolutionary manner. Compared to other systems, advanced metering infrastructure has three distinctive features that must be carefully considered, including hybrid mode of message transmission, constraints on the computation and storage capability of smart meters ($\mathcal{S}\mathcal{M}s$) and variable number of participants in demand response (DR) projects. In order to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability, an efficient and robust scheme for key management is required for secure two-way transmission between $\mathcal{S}\mathcal{M}s$ and data control unit ($\mathcal{D}\mathcal{C}\mathcal{U}$), which is still an unsolved problem. To deal with the security requirements and consider the specific features, this paper proposes a novel key management scheme that drastically reduces the computation cost of the $\mathcal{D}\mathcal{C}\mathcal{U}$ and $\mathcal{S}\mathcal{M}s$. Further, in the proposed scheme, there is no need to change the keys of existing $\mathcal{S}\mathcal{M}s$ when a $\mathcal{S}\mathcal{M}$ joins/leaves the group. Therefore, the computation cost of $\mathcal{D}\mathcal{C}\mathcal{U}$ and $\mathcal{S}\mathcal{M}s$ for updating the keys is reduced to $\mathcal{O}$(1). Finally, we have analyzed the performance and security of our scheme which evidently shows that our proposed scheme provides better results than the related schemes.