Realization and Modernization of Electrical Smart Grids with Wireless Sensor Networks - Review

International Journal of Distributed

Sensor Networks
2021, Vol. 17(8)
Review of key management techniques Ó The Author(s) 2021
DOI: 10.1177/15501477211041541
for advanced metering infrastructure journals.sagepub.com/home/dsn

Otisitswe Kebotogetse , Ravi Samikannu and Abid Yahya

Abstract
The electricity industry has been developed through the introduction of the smart grid. This has brought about two-way
communication to the grid and its components. The smart grid has managed to increase the efficiency and reliability of
the traditional power grid over the years. A smart grid has a system that is used to measure and collect readings for
power consumption reflection, and the system is known as the Advanced Metering Infrastructure. The advanced meter-
ing infrastructure has its components too which are the smart metre, metre control system, collector or concentrator
and communication networks (wide area network, neighbourhood area network, and home area network). The commu-
nication networks in the advanced metering infrastructure have created a vulnerability to cyber-attacks over the years.
The reliability of the power grid to consumers relies on the readings from the smart metre, and this brings about the
need to secure the smart metre data. This article presents a review of key management methods in advanced metering
infrastructure environments. The article begins with an overview of advanced metering infrastructure and then shows
the relationship between the advanced metering infrastructure and the smart grid. The review then provides the security
issues related to advanced metering infrastructure. Finally, the article provides existing works of key management meth-
ods in advanced metering infrastructure and future directions in securing advanced metering infrastructure and the
smart grid.

Keywords
Advanced metering infrastructure, key management, smart grid, smart metre

Date received: 30 March 2021; accepted: 27 July 2021

Handling Editor: Yanjiao Chen

Introduction advantages than disadvantages over traditional power

systems or one-way power systems. Smart grids use
Every country’s economic and social welfare relies digital technology to intelligently implement the actions
mostly on electricity. Electricity is responsible for daily of all users connected to them. Smart Grids are charac-
operations in industries and is used for domestic pur- terized by huge and complicated interconnections of
poses. At home, electricity is used for cooking, lighting,
house appliances and other domestic/household chores.
Electricity providers face challenges of managing the Department of Electrical, Computer & Telecommunications Engineering,
generation, transmission and distribution of electricity Botswana International University of Science & Technology, Palapye,
efficiently, and at the same time making profit.1 The Botswana
demand for renewable energy supply and numerous
technological advancements that are increasing has Corresponding author:
Otisitswe Kebotogetse, Department of Electrical, Computer &
motivated providers to develop smart grids. The adop- Telecommunications Engineering, Botswana International University of
tion of smart grids has brought about a solution to Science & Technology, Palapye 32049, Serowe, Botswana.
these challenges faced by providers, as it has many Email: [email protected]

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without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2 International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

reliance on the execution of the complete control frame-

work on the communication networks’ execution.4 As
technology continues to be enhanced and improved for
power grids’ capabilities, they become complex and vul-
nerable to different types of attacks. Figure 1 shows an
example of some of the components of the smart grid.
Smart metres remain the most widely used applica-
tion of the Internet of Things (IoT) today.6 A report for
the smart metre market for the years 2019–2024 esti-
mates smart metre usage worldwide to have exceeded
14% in 2019. Thus, 14% of metres used for energy have
been replaced by smart metres now.7 The Asia-Pacific is
the world’s leading continent in smart metres, followed
by Europe and third on the list is North America. Asia-
Pacific demands around 110–200 million electricity
metres annually, with China being the leading country
Figure 1. Components of the smart grid.5 at 70% of the volume.8 The AMI constitutes network,
a management system (billing information, account
management and other data) and smart metres as
networks carrying electricity flows. European Union shown in Figure 2; all these play a vital role in the
(EU) definition for smart grid is an electricity network bi-directional flow of information between the power
that can intelligently integrate the behaviour and grid and the smart metering.10
actions of all users to ensure sustainable, economic and AMI has four main components: smart metre, metre
secure electricity supply. The definition of US data management system (MDMS), data concentrator,
Department of Energy (DoE) states that a smart grid and communication networks.
has digital technology that improves reliability, security
and efficiency of electrical systems.2 The smart grid is
made up of four components which are the advanced Smart meter
metering infrastructure (AMI), supervisory control and Smart metre is an electronic device that records data
data acquisition (SCADA), plug-in hybrid electric vehi- indicating consumption of energy, water or natural gas
cle (PHEV) and communication protocols and in a house or home.11 Power utilities highly use the
standards.3 device to monitor customers’ consumption of electric-
Information and communication technology (ICT) ity. Smart metres are also used to forecast for produc-
is the core component of the smart grid. ICT empowers tion of electricity to meet the demand. Smart metre
the power grids of today by giving them a two-way sends readings to the MDMS.
communication capability, restoring and isolating
power outages faster, encouraging the integration of
renewable electricity sources into the network and MDMS
enabling the consumer to optimize their power con-
sumption. This leads to a progressively significant part This is the control sever of AMI. The MDMS receives
within the communication infrastructure and a heavier data from the collector and process billing information.

Figure 2. An overview of advanced metering infrastructure.9

Kebotogetse et al. 3

Figure 3. Communication network connection of AMI.14

MDMS also commands the smart metre to perform responding to commands within a timely manner and
required actions.12 not denying actions of receiving or transmitting data.

Data concentrator Availability

This is also known as the collector. It is an intermediate This is the state of being unoccupied and able to be
device that collects data from the smart metre and used. In AMI, availability is practised when an autho-
directs it to the MDMS. rized user gets access to the data required whenever
they are on demand. Whenever the system does not
provide required data on demand, the system will be
Communication networks violating the availability aspect.
Communication networks are the base of the two-way Cryptographic techniques should be adopted for the
communication flow within the AMI. There are three security requirements discussed above to be ensured in
networks which are home area network (HAN), neigh- AMI. Key management systems that are efficient are
bourhood area network (NAN) and wide area network needed for the cryptographic techniques to secure
(WAN).13 HAN uses Zigbee technology, NAN uses AMI.16 The most important aspects to consider before
Wi-Fi technology and WAN uses the Global System any AMI installation are as follows:
for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology.
Figure 3 illustrates the three communication networks.  Customer data should be protected through con-
AMI just like other systems needs to follow or obey fidentiality security aspect.
the security requirements: confidentiality, integrity,  Messages should be authenticated (messages for
accountability and availability. metre readings, load control and other messages
that are shared in AMI).
Confidentiality
Over the years, there have been security threats to
This is keeping data private or secret from unauthorized smart metre readings aggregation and consumers’ pri-
access. In AMI, confidentiality is practised by keeping vacy. The data transmitted during these processes
private the customer’s consumption pattern and per- should be guaranteed to have integrity and confidential-
sonal information of the customer.15 Only authorized ity. The proposed research works addressing these secu-
entities can access these data. rity concerns have been developed. Some works focus
on deploying hardware devices at the consumer’s side,
which is very expensive as the devices will be needed for
Integrity each smart metre in the grid.17,18 Other research works
This is the state of being honest and whole without any focus on the distortion of the readings at the transmitter
division. In AMI, integrity is practised by maintaining and reconstructing them at the receiver, requiring com-
the system to be whole, and this is done by detecting plex computations.19,20 Cryptographic security schemes
illegal tempering with data. have proven to be useful in guaranteeing security and
privacy without the need for expensive or complex
devices.21,22 However, most of the proposed crypto-
Accountability graphic security schemes are of high computation and
This is being responsible or answerable to all the smart metres have low computational abilities. This cre-
actions. In AMI, accountability is practised by ated the need to come up with schemes that are
4 International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

lightweight but at the same time providing privacy and Attackers target smart metre readings, billing informa-
following all security requirements. tion and customer information. The attackers or intru-
ders are usually highly skilled in cyber, and they look
Security issues and challenges related to for different weaknesses of the system to exploit the
AMI necessary information they are looking for. They usu-
ally access AMI configuration by cyber means and
As the smart grid deployments and enhancements con- temper with the firmware.23
tinue to grow, the AMI was developed as one of the The vulnerabilities discussed above are usually
enhancements. The development of AMI came with avoided or prevented by introducing four security
security challenges, and these challenges can be aspects in AMI infrastructure which are confidentiality,
addressed in three aspects which are end user privacy, integrity, availability and accountability.25 Cheating of
system resisting cyber-attacks and illegal power customers is avoided by the introduction of these secu-
consumption. rity aspects. Attackers usually develop hacking tools
which are targeting systems without these strong secu-
End user privacy rity aspects.26 In AMI, the four aspects are vital during
the deployment of the system. Cyber-attacks can also
There are three approaches for end user privacy in be targeting a nation or state as a form of terrorism.
AMI applications. The three approaches are anonymi- Attackers may take control of the whole grid in demand
zation, hybrid and non-anonymization. The utility pro- for money or power from a nation or state. If the secu-
vider determines the best privacy approach as a mutual rity aspects are in place, it is difficult for these intruders
agreement between them and customers. to take over the system.

Anonymization. This is a privacy approach whereby data Illegal power consumption

cannot be retrieved when they are on transit or when in
the smart metre or at the utility provider’s side.23 The The most popular way of illegal consumption of power
privacy approach is usually done when disassociating is tapping the energy from transmission lines.27 Illegal
customer ID and consumption data. The utility provi- consumers can also manipulate metres to consume
der here cannot generate any billing information from the grid illegally. The techniques used or adopted
because they cannot match any customer ID to con- by these illegal consumers use magnetic materials to
sumption data. destroy the memory of the energy metre, introduction
of unwanted harmonics,28 interchanging metre term-
inals and others. The introduction of AMI has led to a
Hybrid. This is a privacy approach whereby only the reduction to most if not all the illegal consumption of
customer ID is revealed at the utility provider’s side but electricity. Smart metres notify the utility provider
the consumption data are not revealed to the utility whenever the readings are tempered with. The utility
provider. The consumption data are modified before provider can study each customer’s consumption pat-
being transmitted to the utility provider making it diffi- tern from previous readings, which means whenever the
cult for the utility provider to make correct conclusions. pattern changes, an investigation is made. Attackers
In this case, the utility provider receives data from the targeting tempering with metre readings during transit
specified customer ID, but the consumption data do often forget that there is an associated log that goes
not reveal the customer’s correct consumption. along for every activity. Monitoring of logs in the AMI
makes it easier for the detection of illegal power
Non-anonymization. This is a privacy approach whereby consumption.
privacy is provided only when data are in transit, thus
when transmission of consumption data from the smart
metre to the utility provider occurs. The utility provider
Attacks on AMI
can retrieve customer ID and correct consumption data There are five main components of the smart metre:
after receiving data from the smart metre. This is the central unit, metrology system, the collector, HAN, and
most used approach as utility providers are trusted with optical interface.29 All the components have attacks
customer’s data. Encryption occurs during the trans- related to compromising the general security of AMI as
mission of data.24 highlighted by Table 1. Hardware and reverse engineer-
ing can impact the control unit and metrology system,
enabling the attacker to access information and privi-
System resisting cyber-attacks leges that they can use to exploit data. Attackers may
The operation or deployment of AMI in the smart grid also modify the control unit circuit board, enabling
has brought about vulnerability to cyber-attacks. remote control of the smart metre on their side.
Kebotogetse et al. 5

Table 1. Attacks related to smart metering.

Attack Place of attack Impact

Blocking of service Remote access to WAN Malfunctioning of the power grid and also
the AMI.
Firmware attack Physically accessing the smart metre/ Affects the ability of the smart metre to
Remotely upgrading WAN via the gateway measure.
Injection of packet Accessing WAN Wrong billings to consumers and utility
providers.
Eavesdropping Remotely accessing of WAN Detect and expose consumer’s privacy.
Remote control of the attacker Accessing WAN Distortion of metre readings at
consumers and being transferred to the
whole grid.
Interception On the local metrological Wrong readings feed to the gateway.
network (LMN) or WAN

WAN: wide area network; AMI: advanced metering infrastructure.

Modification of the control unit may also deny legiti- many senders communicate to many receivers simulta-
mate users access to the system as their data are tem- neously,35 group to group. In the AMI network, multi-
pered with. The communication between the smart cast transmission or communication takes place when
metre and AMI happens through the collector in the the utility provider sends out notification messages to a
smart metre. The communication between the two can group of smart metres in the same location or demand
be consumption readings, commands on firmware response (DR) group; the DR group can be smart
updates, and configurations. The attacks that may arise metres for businesses, and the group depends on the
from this communication or flow of data disturb the DR project or classification.36 In multicast communica-
power grid, theft of power, and denial of service.30 On tion, only the chosen DR group receives the message
the HAN, the possible attacks that occur are stealing of and other groups do not receive the message.
data and blocking data flow. The optical interface is
where a technician instals and configures software in
the smart metre. The attacks in the optical interface are Broadcast transmission mode
interception and firmware attacks, resulting in power This transmission mode is used for communication
denial and disruption of the power grid in general. between one point and all other points in the network.37
Broadcast transmission was first used in the AM radio,
and now it is continuously used in both radio and tele-
Key management methods vision for distribution of audio and video, respectively.
There are three transmission modes in key manage- In the AMI network, broadcast transmission or com-
ment, which are unicast, multicast and broadcast. munication occurs when the utility company communi-
cates changes in electricity pricing to all consumers and
when notifying the consumers of power outages or any
Unicast transmission mode other ongoing project that may interrupt the service of
This transmission mode is used for communications power distribution.38 In broadcast communication, pri-
between two points.31 The data are transmitted from vacy is not key; thus, anyone in the network receives
the sender and go directly to one specified receiver. the message.
Only these two devices participate in the communica- In the key management systems, different
tion and other devices in the network stay idle.32 In the approaches are adopted for efficient management of
AMI network, unicast transmission or communication keys.36 Table 2 shows the different approaches and the
occurs when the smart metre sends consumption data techniques used in each approach.
to the utility provider.33
Related works
Multicast transmission mode Over the years, some work has been carried out in key
This transmission mode is used for communication management techniques for security of the smart metre
between one point and many specified points, referred and the smart grid in general.
to as a group.34 Multicast transmission can also be a The work in Rafaeli and Hutchison49 shows that
group of senders to a group of receivers thus when research on group key management has been done over
6 International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Table 2. Different key management approaches.

Key approach Technique Description Related work

Double encryption Authentication based The method uses two servers and these Parvez et al.39
servers function without increasing the
number of packet overheads.
Tree key graph Key graph The method is based on the use of key Liu et al.32 and Yu et al.40
graphs. The key graph controls keys of
individual smart metres, ensuring the security
requirements. In this method, the data are
kept private to avoid unauthorized access to
consumer’s daily habits.
Broadcast group PUF based This method uses weak physical unclonable Nabeel et al.42
key management functions (PUFs). PUF is an electronic
connection that deploys variations in
manufacturing to produce unique digital
finger prints.41 These PUFs provide robust
authentication to smart metre and data
collector in the AMI.
Hash chain PUF based This method uses PUFs and brings in the Delavar et al.44
Schnorr protocol for authentication
broadcast messaging protocol in AMI43
Multi group key graph Key graph The method creates secure cryptographic Benmalek et al.45
keys for every smart metre and MDMS over
a public channel. The keys are made in such a
way that they refresh after every transmission
for assurance of security.
Enhanced identity- Authentication based This method authenticates the smart metre Nicanfar et al.46
based cryptography with a server in the smart grid. The approach
adopts a key management protocol for
secure communication using public key.
ID-based encryption Hybrid The method combines private and public key Wan et al.47
cryptography. Different encryption algorithms
can be used here to achieve the combination
or the double encryption/decryption system.
The known work of this method used elliptic
curve cryptosystem.47 In this method, public
key certificate is not needed.
Advanced encryption standard Hybrid The method has an initial stage to eliminate Khasawneh and Kadoch48
or reduce computation overhead that uses
elliptic curve cryptography. The method
provides data encapsulation and its initial
stage provides key encapsulation.

AMI: advanced metering infrastructure; MDMS: metre data management system.

the years. The approaches from previous work are smart metres and provides efficient key management to
divided into three main categories: centralized group, assure confidentiality and integrity of communication
decentralized architectures and distributed key manage- between the smart metre and the utility provider is pro-
ment protocols. posed. The technology is called a physically unclonable
In Yan et al.,50 an efficient batch authentication function (PUF). The system is directly installed in exist-
scheme for smart grid using binary authentication tree ing smart metre communication without the need for
is proposed. The scheme enables the gateway in AMI modification of the metre.
that verifies smart metre data to batch authenticate In Benmalek and Challal,53 a scalable multi group
data. key management method to be used in AMI is pro-
Kamto et al.51 proposed a key management scheme posed. The work supports the three modes of communi-
that combined Needham–Schroeder authentication cation: unicast, multicast and broadcast by using multi
protocol and a cryptographic method known as elliptic group key technique. The method is very applicable to
curve. The key management scheme uses a trust anchor large-scale smart grids.
to establish a session key. In Wen et al.,52 a technology The work in Benmalek et al.54 proposes four key
that provides strong hardware-based authentication for management schemes for AMI, to secure
Kebotogetse et al. 7

communication in the smart grid. The proposed multiple users and provides a link between key manage-
schemes are based on individual and batch rekeying ment centre and multicast network.
operations and support unicast, multicast and broad- In Benmalek et al.,45 a scalable multi group key
cast communications. management scheme for AMI is proposed. The scheme
In Benmalek et al.,55 a new key management scheme introduced low storage overheads when compared to
called iVerSAMI is proposed. The proposed scheme is others and also indicated low communication
aimed at addressing the efficiency flaws in broadcast overheads.
key management protocol suffered by VerSAMI key In Parvez et al.,39 a key management-based scheme
graph–based scheme. The work shows that iVerSAMI having two simple servers is proposed. The scheme
is more secure and efficient than VerSAMI in terms of focuses on a two-level encryption that does not result
storage and communication overheads. in increased packet overhead. Encryption secret keys
The work in Manjul and Mishra56 proposed an are generated by using hash functions in Kiarie et al.60
approach known as elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)- The method is anticipated to be a good approach to
based secure group communication. The approach is deal with 128 bit keys in encryption.
aimed at providing an efficient and improved mechan-
ism for group key management solutions. The method
minimizes rekeying cost and reduces computational Future directions
and communication overheads. AMI communication network security issues and chal-
The work of Kumar et al.57 proposed a key manage- lenges continue to be a major concern regardless of pre-
ment scheme designed for HAN having low rekeying vious researchers’ huge efforts. There is still need for
overheads and robustness that is enhanced, allowing future research ventures related to the smart grid, par-
the smart metres and HAN to share a session key ticularly key management in AMI. The AMI network
among themselves. The scheme does not require update comprises smart metres, customers and also the utility
to the keys whenever a smart metre leaves or joins the providers. The ‘Related works’ section describes the
system. This has reduced the rekeying cost compared research efforts made over the years to provide security
to other existing key management schemes. to AMI systems. However, there are still vulnerabilities
In El-Hajjar and Hanzo,37 a novel key management and issues that arise and this has provided potential
scheme based on the key graph method is proposed. research areas. The areas such as scalable architecture,
The scheme had three different key management pro- consumer privacy and security, defensive mechanisms
cesses designed for hybrid transmission modes, unicast, to address attacks and threats and content-centric net-
multicast and broadcast. Key management problems in working still have room for research ventures in AMI
AMI were addressed in Liu et al.32 with the proposed and key management. The smart grid has a large num-
novel Key Management Systems (KMS). In Kumar ber of sensors connected to it. The sensors are con-
et al.,58 the work of securing communication between nected over a wide area to control and monitor
multiple users using key graphs is proposed. The activities in the smart grid. Building a scalable architec-
method was later found to be weak by Wan et al.47 The ture for AMI network to deal with large amounts of
work found that the method58 was vulnerable to the data from these sensors is a major challenge faced by
denial of service attack and proposed a solution to the smart grid. It has been evident from the past
address this problem. Wan et al.47 addresses the prob- research works that most solutions do not address the
lem of de-synchronization attack and lack of scalability issue of scalability in the smart grid which is a major
due to inefficient key management in Liu et al.32 The requirement of a growing grid. Scalability and effi-
proposed new scalable key management method com- ciency of AMI communication will make secure and
bined identity-based cryptosystem and efficient key tree efficient metre data collection and distribution of mes-
method. The solution was meant for securing smart sages. A few works address the issue of scalability,
metre and MDMS communication. which are seen in Benmalek et al.45 and Wan et al.47
The work in Thomas et al.59 describes and imple- The proposed solutions that address scalability have
ments a signature-based station-to-station protocol for shown that key management in AMI is a promising
exchanging the secret shared keys among the AMI outcome, which means that work in the future should
applications to eliminate undesirable security threats. focus on the design of robust, scalable AMI
Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) 1 hashing algorithm is communication.
used for creation digital signatures using private key Protection and security of consumers is one of the
encryption. major requirements of the smart grid AMI communica-
A secure IP multicasting system using encryption tion. To address the requirement, smart metres should
key management in an iNet environment was proposed be installed and encrypted with the latest security com-
by Maharjan et al.34 The system delivers keys between ponents for reliable storage. Smart metres should be
8 International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

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