Towards self-healing smart grid via intelligent local controller switching under jamming

A key component of a smart grid is its ability to collect useful information from a power grid for enabling control centers to estimate the current states of the power grid. Such information can be delivered to the control centers via wireless or wired networks. We envision that wireless technology will be widely used for local-area communication subsystems in the smart grid (e.g., in distribution networks). However, various attacks with drastic impacts can be launched in wireless networks such as channel jamming attacks and DoS attacks. In particular, jamming attacks can cause a wide range of damages to power grids, e.g., delayed delivery of time-critical messages can prevent control centers from properly controlling the outputs of generators to match load demands. In this paper, we design a communication subsystem with enhanced self-healing capability under the presence of jamming through intelligent local controller switching. Our proposed framework allows sufficient readings from smart meters to be continuously collected by various local controllers to estimate the states of a power grid under various attack scenarios. In addition, we provide guidelines on optimal placement of local controllers to ensure effective switching of smart meters under jamming. Via theoretical, experimental and simulation studies, we demonstrate that our proposed system is effective in maintaining communications between smart meters and local controllers even when multiple jammers are present in the network.