Advanced Metering Infrastructure Security with Software-Defined Network in Smart Grid

Abstract

The Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is the most important and basic element in the Smart Grid systems. Technologies grow complicated as the world becomes more convenient. Power grid, smart building, electric vehicles, and other technology need to be managed and maintained flawlessly in case of the possibility of cyberattacks to shut down all the systems and result in huge loss economically or potentially affect people's life. It is important to use communication technologies to provide many functions including facilitate bidirectional communications and remote controls. Since AMI needs to be widely deployed to each home user, power companies are required to build a large number of data concentrators to manage neighboring networks uniformly to ensure that meter data reading can be accurately collected and ensure the security of the transmitting process. Besides, since data concentrators are mostly deployed in the public environment, the devices are vulnerable to the impact on outside physical attacks. Therefore, we plan to construct an improved AMI communication network to increase security and lower its cost. We will discuss on security standard, and how the architecture for the AMI communication network is implemented by using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol based on the Software-Defined Network.