Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) Certificate Based Authentication Scheme for Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is an important subsystem within the smart grid. Smart meters (SMs) in AMI play crucial role in establishing communication with outside world such as utility servers. They report real time power consumption data which aids in demand side management. Security of this link is an indispensable for cybersecurity. Authentication between SMs and utility servers is of prime importance for secure transmission of metering data, yet it increases the computational burden on operations. This paper proposes a light-weight Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) certificate based authentication mechanism by utilizing different elliptic curves. Furthermore, computational times of authentication scheme with different ECDSA curves were compared with RSA digital signature algorithm. For this purpose, algorithms have been implemented using open SSL library. Results show that ECDSA authentication scheme has much better timing performance when compared to RSA; and can be safely used for authentication in AMI communication systems.