Physical layer assist authentication technique for smart meter system

The study introduces the novel message authentication schemes for the smart meter system, where the symmetric cryptography-based physical layer-assisted message authentication (PLAA) scheme and the public key infrastructure- based PLAA scheme are introduced. The proposed schemes integrate the conventional message authentication schemes and the physical layer authentication mechanisms by taking advantage of temporal and spatial uniqueness in physical layer channel responses, aiming to achieve fast authentication while minimising the packet transmission overhead. The authors also verify their claims through extensive analysis and simulation via comparing with proposed PLAA scheme with traditional upper layer authentication schemes. The proposed novel schemes yield the lower time delay for authenticating each message, which can satisfy the requirement of the real-time control over the smart grid.