Improving smart grid authentication using Merkle Trees

The electrical power grid forms the functional foundation of our modern societies, but in the near future our aging electrical infrastructure will not be able to keep pace with our demands. As a result, nations worldwide have started to convert their power grids into smart grids that will have improved communication and control systems. A smart grid will be better able to incorporate new forms of energy generation as well as be self-healing and more reliable. This paper investigates a threat to wireless communication networks from a fully realized quantum computer, and provides a means to avoid this problem in smart grid domains. We discuss and compare the security aspects, the complexities and the performance of authentication using public-key cryptography and using Merkel Trees. As a result, we argue for the use of Merkle Trees as opposed to public key encryption for authentication of devices in wireless mesh networks (WMN) used in smart grid applications.