Software defined networking for wireless local networks in Smart Grid

Emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology has provided excellent flexibility to large-scale networks in terms of control, management, security, and maintenance. With SDN, network architectures can be deployed and maintained with ease. New trends in computing (e.g., cloud computing, data centers, and virtualization) can seamlessly be integrated with the SDN architecture. On the other hand, recent years witnessed a tremendous growth in the upgrade and modernization of the critical infrastructure networks, namely the Smart-Grid, in terms of its underlying communication infrastructure. From Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems to Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), an increasing number of networking devices are being deployed to connect all the local network components of the Smart Grid together. Such large local networks requires significant effort in terms of network management and security, which is costly in terms of labor and hardware upgrades. SDN would be a perfect candidate technology to alleviate the costs while providing fine-grained control of this critical network infrastructure. Hence, in this paper, we explore the potential utilization of the SDN technology over the Smart Grid communication architecture. Specifically, we introduce three novel SDN deployment scenarios in local networks of Smart Grid. Moreover, we also investigate the pertinent security aspects with each deployment scenario along with possible solutions.