KeyNova: A Highly Secure and Parallel Key Derivation Function for Smart Grid

Modern smart grids require cryptographic key derivation mechanisms that simultaneously ensure strong security guarantees and operational efficiency for large-scale deployments. Existing standards face critical limitations: some collision vulnerabilities in traditional single-PRF scheme and sequential processing bottlenecks that hinder scalability. This paper presents KeyNova, a novel key derivation framework featuring two key advances: (1) A dual-PRF architecture achieving higher security and collision resistance compared to a single-PRF scheme, thus allowing for handling larger data volumes, and (2) parallelizable key generation through lock-free task scheduling. The design enables seamless integration with industrial standards including IEEE C37.118 synchrophasor communications and 5G network slicing specifications. By bridging high security with practical engineering constraints, KeyNova establishes a new paradigm for resilient key management in critical infrastructure ecosystems.