Key Management Systems for Smart Grid Advanced Metering Infrastructure: A Survey

Smart grids are evolving as the next generation power systems that transform the traditional ways of functioning of present electrical grids. Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is one of the key components in smart grids. An AMI comprises of systems and networks, that are responsible for collecting and analyzing data received from smart meters. In addition, AMI also manages the different applications related with power and services based on the data collected from smart meters. Thus, AMI plays a significant role in the smooth functioning of smart grids. Malicious adversaries have immense opportunities for attacking the AMI, as it is made up of systems that are highly vulnerable to such attacks. Providing security to AMI is necessary as adversaries can cause potential infrastructural damage and privacy threats in smart grid. One of the most effective and challenging topic's identified, is the key management system (KMS), for sustaining the security concerns in AMI. Therefore, KMS seeks to be a promising research area for future development of AMI. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the first to highlight the significance of KMS for the security point of view for AMI in smart grids. We believe that we have taken here the needed initiatives that will help understand the importance of key management in AMI security, and strengthen future research works carried out in this area. This survey highlights the key security issues of AMIs and focuses on how key management techniques can be utilized for safeguarding AMI. At first, we discuss the main features of AMIs, the deployment scenario of smart grids and identify the relationship between smart grid and AMI. Then, we explore the main features of AMI, and also introduce the security issues and challenges. We also provide a discussion on the role of key management in AMI, and point out the differences between traditional electrical systems and smart grids. We then classify and provide a review of the existing works in literature that deal with secure KMS in AMI. Finally, we summarize the possible future open research issues and challenges of KMS in AMI.