Permissioned Blockchain and Edge Computing Empowered Privacy-Preserving Smart Grid Networks

• Published in: IEEE internet of things journal Vol. 6; no. 5; pp. 7992 - 8004
• Main Authors: Gai, Keke, Wu, Yulu, Zhu, Liehuang, Xu, Lei, Zhang, Yan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.10.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Access control; Blockchain; Cryptography; Data retrieval; Data transfer (computers); Depletion; Edge computing; Internet of Things; Mapping; permissioned blockchain; Privacy; privacy-preserving; Smart grid; smart grid network (SGN); Smart grids
• ISSN: 2327-4662; 2327-4662
• DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2019.2904303

The blooming trend of smart grid deployment is engaged by the evolution of the network technology, as the connected environment offers various alternatives for electrical data collections. Having diverse data sharing/transfer means is deemed an important aspect in enabling intelligent controls/governance in smart grid. However, security and privacy concerns also are introduced while flexible communication services are provided, such as energy depletion and infrastructure mapping attacks. This paper proposes a model permissioned blockchain edge model for smart grid network (PBEM-SGN) to address the two significant issues in smart grid, privacy protections, and energy security, by means of combining blockchain and edge computing techniques. We use group signatures and covert channel authorization techniques to guarantee users' validity. An optimal security-aware strategy is constructed by smart contracts running on the blockchain. Our experiments have evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.