Mostafa M. Fouda

Toward intelligent machine-to-machine communications in smart grid

The advanced metering infrastructure of the smart grid presents the biggest growth potential in the machine-to-machine market today. Spurred by recent advances in M2M technologies, SG smart meters are expected not to require human intervention in characterizing power requirements and energy distribution. However, there are many challenges in the design of the SG communications network whereby the electrical appliances and smart meters are able to exchange information pertaining to varying power requirements. Furthermore, different types of M2M gateways are required at different points (e.g., at home, in the building, at the neighborhood, and so forth) of the SG communication network. This article surveys a number of existing communication technologies that can be adopted for M2M communication in SG. Among these, the most reliable technology to facilitate M2M communication in the SG home area network is pointed out, and its shortcoming is also noted. Furthermore, a possible solution to deal with this shortcoming to improve SG communications scalability is also presented.

A Lightweight Message Authentication Scheme for Smart Grid Communications

Smart grid (SG) communication has recently received significant attentions to facilitate intelligent and distributed electric power transmission systems. However, communication trust and security issues still present practical concerns to the deployment of SG. In this paper, to cope with these challenging concerns, we propose a lightweight message authentication scheme features as a basic yet crucial component for secure SG communication framework. Specifically, in the proposed scheme, the smart meters which are distributed at different hierarchical networks of the SG can first achieve mutual authentication and establish the shared session key with Diffie-Hellman exchange protocol. Then, with the shared session key between smart meters and hash-based authentication code technique, the subsequent messages can be authenticated in a lightweight way. Detailed security analysis shows that the proposed scheme can satisfy the desirable security requirements of SG communications. In addition, extensive simulations have also been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in terms of low latency and few signal message exchanges.

An early warning system against malicious activities for smart grid communications

Smart grid presents the largest growth potential in the machine-to-machine market today. Spurred by the recent advances in M2M technologies, the smart meters/sensors used in smart grid are expected not to require human intervention in characterizing power requirements and energy distribution. These numerous sensors are able to report back information such as power consumption and other monitoring signals. However, SG, as it comprises an energy control and distribution system, requires fast response to malicious events such as distributed denial of service attacks against smart meters. In this article, we model the malicious and/or abnormal events, which may compromise the security and privacy of smart grid users, as a Gaussian process. Based on this model, a novel early warning system is proposed for anticipating malicious events in the SG network. With the warning system, the SG control center can forecast such malicious events, thereby enabling SG to react beforehand and mitigate the possible impact of malicious activity. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed early warning system through computer-based simulations.

Intrusion detection system (IDS) for combating attacks against cognitive radio networks

While cognitive radio networks (CRNs) present a promising solution to solve the scarcity of the radio spectrum, they are still susceptible to security threats. Until now, only a few researchers considered the use of intrusion detection systems (IDSs) to combat these threats against CRNs. In this article we describe a CRN based on IEEE wireless regional area network (WRAN) and describe some of the security threats against it. For the secondary users in the CRN to quickly detect whether they are being attacked, a simple yet effective IDS is then presented. Our proposal uses non-parametric cumulative sum (cusum) as the change point detection algorithm to discover the abnormal behavior due to attacks. Our proposed IDS adopts an anomaly detection approach and it profiles the CRN system parameters through a learning phase. So, our proposal is also able to detect new types of attacks. As an example, we present the case of detection of a jamming attack, which was not known to the IDS beforehand. The proposed IDS is evaluated through computer based simulations, and the simulation results clearly indicate the effectiveness of our proposal.

Towards a light-weight message authentication mechanism tailored for Smart Grid communications

Smart Grid (SG) technology, which aims at bringing the worlds aging electric grids into the 21st century by utilizing intelligent transmission and distributed networks, has been gaining momentum in recent years. Despite its attractive features, the SG technology remains vulnerable to some security threats, such as spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks. In this paper, to address these potential security issues, we propose a light-weight and secure message authentication mechanism. The proposed mechanism is based on Diffie-Hellman key establishment protocol and hash-based message authentication code, which allows various smart meters at different points of the SG to make mutual authentication and achieve message authentication with low latency and few signal message exchanges. Detailed security analysis shows it can satisfy the desirable security requirements. In addition, extensive computer-based simulation also demonstrates its efficiency.

A novel demand control policy for improving quality of power usage in smart grid

Smart grid has emerged as a promising technology for enabling bi-directional communication between the power company and its users to facilitate intelligent, robust, and resilient next generation power grid systems. Through this technology, both the power company and its subscribers can be equally benefited, not only from economic point of view, but also in terms of environment-friendly quality of power usage. One important challenge for the smart grid designers is the demand side management, which can lead to avoiding the peak hours and reducing the cost for the consumers. In this paper, we address the power balancing challenge for the smart grid and discuss different solutions including game theoretic methods and demand control policies. Also, we present our novel demand control policy for achieving an effective management of the power consumption. Computer simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed policy compared to existing ones.

On Efficient Traffic Distribution for Disaster Area Communication Using Wireless Mesh Networks

In recent time, a great deal of research effort has been directed toward promptly facilitating post-disaster communication by using wireless mesh networks (WMNs). WMN technology has been considered to be effectively exploited for this purpose as it provides multi-hop communication through an access network comprising wireless mesh routers, which are connected to the Internet through gateways (GWs). One of the critical challenges in using WMNs for establishing disaster-recovery networks is the issue of distributing traffic among the users in a balanced manner in order to avoid congestion at the GWs. To overcome this issue, we envision a disaster zone WMN comprising a network management center. First, we thoroughly investigate the problem of traffic load balancing amongst the GWs in our considered disaster zone WMN. Then, we develop traffic load distribution techniques from two perspectives. Our proposal from the first perspective hinges upon a balanced distribution of the bandwidth to be allocated per user. On the other hand, our second perspective considers the dynamic (i.e., varying) bandwidth demands from the disaster zone users that requires a more practical and refined distribution of the available bandwidth by following an intelligent forecasting method. The effectiveness of our proposals is evaluated through computer-based simulations.

A novel heuristic-based traffic distribution method for disaster zone Wireless Mesh Networks

Recently, the research community has paid much attention to Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) for rapidly formulating disaster zone networking infrastructures. These multi-hop WMNs, with almost stationary wireless Mesh Routers (MRs) as an access network, and gateways (GWs) connected to Internet, present an attractive choice for quickly establishing post-disaster recovery networks. However, one of the main challenges in such infrastructures consists in the traffic distribution among the users for avoiding congested GWs. In this paper, we focus on the issue of distributing and balancing the traffic load among the main GWs of the disaster zone WMN. We propose a novel method for controlling the handover of some of the MRs connected to the congested GWs. The performance of our method is evaluated by conducting computer-based simulations. The simulation-results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method in keeping the number of network-configuration changes to minimal while resulting in a better Fairness Index compared with other conventional techniques.

A Novel P2P VoD Streaming Technique Integrating Localization and Congestion Awareness Strategies

The concept of the “future Internet” has evolved amongst researchers recently to relieve the tremendous pressure on the current Internet infrastructure to support the heterogeneous networking technologies, mobile devices, increased population of users, and also the high user requirements for real-time services and applications. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Video on Demand (VoD) streaming technologies are expected to be a key technology in the future Internet. Because the existing P2P streaming techniques are attributed to a number of shortcomings, P2P VoD schemes need to be adequately redesigned for the future Internet. In this paper, we propose a scheme to effectively provide VoD by using P2P-based mesh overlay networks that may be suitable for the future Internet. Our scheme selects the most appropriate peers by exploiting domain-based localization and congestion awareness strategies. Through simulations, our proposed scheme is demonstrated to have scalability and capability of reducing the startup delay and total link cost, while maintaining high playback rate. The results are encouraging and show the importance of redesigning P2P VoD services in future Internet.

Assessing attack threat against ZigBee-based home area network for Smart Grid communications

Smart Grid (SG) technology aims at bringing the worlds aging electric grids into the twenty first century. To this end, the current power grids require to be overlayed with a robust communications system. Home Area Network (HAN) is an important part of the SG communications framework through which the end-users are able to communicate with the electricity provider. In a HAN, there is typically a smart-meter and a number of electric appliances. Most of the proposals to-date have agreed upon using IEEE 802.15.4 wireless technology dubbed as ZigBee for the HAN communications amongst the smart meter and the various electric appliances. Although ZigBee provides few security features, the technology still suffers from a number of security vulnerabilities, particularly in case of SG HAN. In this paper, we describe a HANIdentifier (HANId) conflict attack against ZigBee for HAN communications and demonstrate the impact of the attack on SG communications through computer simulations. Finally, we also envision an appropriate framework to prevent the attack.