JICE: Joint data compression and encryption for wireless energy auditing networks

Fine-grained real-time metering is a fundamental service of wireless energy auditing networks, where metering data is transmitted from embedded power meters to gateways for centralized processing, storage, and forwarding. Due to limited meter capability and wireless bandwidth, the increasing sampling rates and network scales needed to support new energy auditing applications pose significant challenges to metering data fidelity and secrecy. This paper exploits the compression and encryption properties of compressive sensing (CS) to design a joint data compression and encryption (JICE) approach that addresses these two challenges simultaneously. Compared with a conventional signal processing pipeline that compresses and encrypts data sequentially, JICE reduces computation and storage complexities due to its simple design. It thus leaves more processor time and available buffer space for handling lossy wireless transmissions. Moreover, JICE features a machine-learning-based reconfiguration mechanism that adapts its signal representation basis to changing power patterns autonomously. On a smart plug platform, we implemented JICE and several baseline approaches including downsampling, lossless compression, and the pipeline approach. Extensive testbed experiments show that JICE achieves higher data delivery ratios and lower recovery distortions under a range of realistic settings. In particular, JICE increases the number of meters supported by a gateway by 50%, compared with the pipeline approach, while keeping a distortion rate lower than 5%.