An anonymized authentication framework for smart metering data privacy

摘要

Emergence of the smart grid necessitates data collection from various entities connected to the power grid. By collecting fine-grained smart metering data from consumer household, smart grid is envisioned to offer innovative features, such as load-demand balance, dynamic pricing and demand-response. However, the advent of sophisticated data analysis tools makes it possible to extract detailed electricity usage patterns, which can reveal personal information of consumer household. The privacy concern is one of the reasons jeopardizing general deployment of smart meters, despite their effectiveness in cost savings for both electricity suppliers and consumers. Anonymous transmission of smart metering data is a potential solution but it requires mechanisms to authenticate anonymous data. Moreover, enabling the service provider's access to consumer information for grid functionality while preserving consumer privacy, is a challenging task. The proposed anonymized authentication framework consists of an authentication scheme to protect data from unauthorized entities and an anonymization scheme to achieve privacy against authorized entities. The framework is designed to prevent service providers from correlating different types of data from a smart meter and avoid single point of failure.