Authentication mechanism for mobile RFID based Smart grid network

Smart grid networks include various communication technologies, among which, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is considered as an enabling technology for realizing the ubiquitous environment by providing identity to an essential object. We have proposed a comprehensive mutual authentication protocol for a mobile RFID based Smart grid network, which is lightweight and efficient. In the proposed mechanism, only simple cryptographic operations (i.e. one-way hash function, XOR operation) are used in RFID tag, while other techniques including elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and zero knowledge protocol are used in mobile reader and backend server. We have deployed a conjoined verification technique to minimize authentication cost in such a network. We illustrate that the proposed mechanism can better performance than the existing representative schemes.