Low Power MAC Security Mechanisms for WSNs in a Smart Grid Environment

Date
2017-08
Authors
Dhunna, Gurpreet Singh
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Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina
Abstract

Smart Grid cybersecurity is one of the key ingredients for successful and wide scale adaptation of the Smart Grid by utilities and governments around the world. The implementation of the Smart Grid relies mainly on the highly distributed sensing and communication functionalities of its components such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and other protection devices. This distributed nature and the high number of connected devices are the main challenges for implementing cybersecurity in the smart grid. As an example, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards (CIP-002 through CIP-009) to define cybersecurity requirements for critical power grid infrastructure. However, NERC CIP standards do not specify cybersecurity for different communication technologies such as WSNs, fiber networks and other network types. Implementing security mechanisms in WSNs is a challenging task due to the limited resources of the sensor devices. WSN security mechanisms should not only focus on reducing the power consumption of the sensor devices, but they should also maintain high reliability and throughput needed by certain Smart Grid applications. In this thesis, we critically review a number of WSN cybersecurity mechanisms. We propose a novel WSN cyber security mechanism suitable for Smart Grid monitoring application. Our mechanism can detect and isolate various attacks in a smart grid environment, such as denial of sleep, forge and replay attacks in an energy efficient way. Simulation results show that our mechanism can outperform existing techniques in terms of power consumption, delay and reliability.

Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Applied Science in Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Regina. xvi, 82 p.
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