A privacy-aware communication scheme in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems

In smart grid, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems feed the metering data to Energy Supplier (ES) every 15 minutes. Using this information, ES can offer incentives to reduce the total power consumption during the peak hours through the real-time pricing mechanism. However, it also brings privacy concerns. Since the metering data is collected by the ES nearly in real-time, the customer´s behavior and habits can be disclosed via the statistical patterns. The privacy problem will hamper the development and deployment of future smart grid. In this paper, we propose a novel metering data transmission scheme in wireless networks. In each Smart Meter (SM), the metering data is split into two parts randomly: Part 1 and Part 2, where the sum of two parts is equal to the original metering data. Part 1 is sent to the ES via cellular link, and Part 2 is sent to the next SM via Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) link. Then the next SM merges Part 2 of the previous SM into its original metering data, and creates the updated metering data. Using the proposed scheme, the metering data received by the ES is randomized, and the customer´s privacy can be effectively protected even if some SM cooperates with the ES.