Pairing based anonymous and secure key agreement protocol for smart grid edge computing infrastructure

Abstract

The most vital concern in the realization of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to encounter the disparate communication systems and technologies. Interoperability solutions such as standards can help us to integrate plenty of diverse devices and their applications in an interoperable framework. Since Smart Grid is a non-trivial prevalent application of Edge computing under the umbrella of IoT. The Smart Grid furnishes communication through Internet Protocol to enable interoperability. However, IP-Based communication makes it vulnerable to serious security threats. Therefore, the secure information sharing among diverse communicating agents in the smart grid environments has become a vital concern. Specifically, to enable secure communication between the smart meter and utility, key management prior to authentication is the most critical task to do. Nowadays, several mechanisms have been introduced to establish secure communication within the emerging smart grid environment. Although, these protocols do not support smart meter anonymity and fail to offer reasonable security. In this paper, we use the identity-based signature to present an anonymous key agreement protocol for the Smart Grid infrastructure. This protocol enables the smart meters to get connected with utility control anonymously to avail the services provided by them. The smart meters realize this objective with the private key in the absence of trusted authority. The trusted authority is involved only during the registration phase The proposed protocol is verified and validated through random oracle model and automated tool ProVerif. Moreover, performance analysis is also observed to consolidate the reliability and efficiency of the proposed protocol.