LAS-SG: An Elliptic Curve-Based Lightweight Authentication Scheme for Smart Grid Environments

The communication among smart meters (SMs) and neighborhood area network (NAN) gateways is a fundamental requisite for managing the energy consumption at the consumer site. The bidirectional communication among SMs and NANs over the insecure public channel is vulnerable to impersonation, SM traceability, and SM physical capturing attacks. Many existing schemes' insecurities and/or inefficiencies call for an efficient and secure authentication scheme for smart grid infrastructure. In this article, we present a privacy preserving and lightweight authentication scheme for smart grid (LAS-SG) using elliptic curve cryptography. The proposed LAS-SG is proved as secure under the standard model. Moreover, the efficiency of the LAS-SG is extracted through a real-time experiment, which attests that proposed LAS-SG completes a round of authentication in 20.331 ms by exchanging only two messages and 192 B. Due to the adequate efficiency and ample security, the proposed LAS-SG is more appropriate for SG environments.

Automated summary

The communication between smart meters (SMs) and neighborhood area network (NAN) gateways is essential for managing energy consumption. Existing schemes lack security and/or efficiency, calling for a more efficient and secure authentication scheme for smart grid infrastructure. This article proposes a privacy-preserving and lightweight authentication scheme (LAS-SG) for smart grids using elliptic curve cryptography, which has been proven to be secure under the standard model. Real-time experiments demonstrate the efficiency of LAS-SG, completing authentication in 20.331 ms with only two messages and 192 B exchanged. Due to its efficiency and security, LAS-SG is more suitable for smart grid environments.