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Summary: The past decade has brought prolific developments to power systems that range from large‐scale renewable integration to digital twins. Modern power systems consist of highly variable generation clusters. Hence, monitoring and prediction of power generation has become a vital part of today's power systems. On the other hand, detailed real‐time information of power usage is also a key parameter for the control algorithms used for the demand side management. With this information flow, power systems become smart grids which offer improved service and enable many advanced operations. In this regard, the home area network (HAN), which collects the power consumption/generation of household devices, plays a key role. So far, a number of technologies such as ZigBee, Z‐Wave, and Power Line Communication (PLC) have been considered for the HAN. Yet, widely used wireless local area network (WLAN) technology, Wi‐Fi, was not identified as a prominent candidate due to the limitations in its latency and reliability. However, with the introduction of the IEEE 802.11ax standard, Wi‐Fi 6 was developed, and it demonstrates guaranteed latency and reliability for its users. Thus, with its widespread deployment in households, Wi‐Fi is becoming a natural candidate for HAN. In this article, we present a comprehensive HAN protocol based on Wi‐Fi 6 which can achieve guaranteed latency and reliability for HAN users. The results show that when an efficient resource allocation mechanism is in place, using Wi‐Fi for HAN does not adversely affect the other Wi‐Fi users in the normal WLAN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home area network (HAN) devices send the electricity consumption and other important data to the smart meter that must remain confidential from other devices. This paper proposes a novel one-dimensional hybrid chaotic map. The proposed map shows excellent chaotic properties when analyzed by bifurcation diagram, Lyapunov exponent & Shannon entropy. We further design an encryption strategy for data transfers between the smart meter and HAN devices. The proposed encryption scheme uses the existing lightweight key management in advanced metering infrastructure (LKM-AMI) architecture for data transfers, in which the encrypted data is transferred through an insecure channel and private keys are provided by trusted third party (TTP) through secure channels. The 2-way communication between HAN devices and the smart meter sends messages that are encrypted by using the proposed novel hybrid one-dimensional chaotic map. The encryption strategy mainly consists of three steps. In the first step, the seed and the control parameters are initialized. The second phase generates two intermediate keys using the proposed hybrid chaotic map. In the last phase, we encrypt the message by applying permutation followed by diffusion using intermediate keys. The proposed encryption strategy is resistant to various attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the performance of an Internet of Things (IoT) network with hybrid visible light communication (VLC)–radio frequency (RF) connectivity and energy harvesting (EH). The considered hybrid network architecture can be adopted for various IoT applications where communications and energy harvesting using a single wireless technology is either infeasible or inefficient. The system performance is analyzed in term of outage probability where the exact closed-form expression is derived. The system performance is shown for various system parameters such as light emitting diode (LED) power, RF transmission power, power sharing factor, and data rate. The obtained analytical results are also verified through Monte Carlo simulation for various operating scenarios. The obtained results show that the optimum harvesting time may broadly vary based on the adopted system parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest technologies and communication protocols are arousing a keen interest in automation, in which the field of home area networks is the most prominent area to work upon toward solving the issues and challenges faced by wireless home area networks regarding adaptability, reliability, cost, throughput, efficiency, and scalability. However, managing the immense number of communication devices on the premises of a smart home is a challenging task. Moreover, the Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging global trend with billions of smart devices to be connected in the near future resulting in a huge amount of diversified data. The continuous expansion of the IoT network causes complications and vulnerabilities due to its dynamic nature and heterogeneous traffic. In the applications of IoT, the wireless sensor network (WSN) plays a major role, and to take benefits from WSN, medium access control (MAC) is the primary protocol to optimize, which helps in allocating resources to a huge number of devices in the smart home environment. Furthermore, artificial intelligence is highly demanded to enhance the efficiency of existing systems and IoT applications. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to achieve an optimized medium access control protocol through machine learning. The machine learning classifier, e.g., random forest (RF) and linear regression model, is adopted for predicting the features of home area networks. The proposed technique is helpful and could overcome the demerits of existing protocols in relation to scalability, throughput, access delay, and reliability and help in achieving an autonomous home area network (HAN). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IoT-based smart grid provides many benefits to both energy consumers and energy producers, such as advanced metering functions, improved reliability, and management. Increasingly with the rise of smart homes and smart cities, security is a concern, as data networks increasingly run parallel to power networks. Ensuring good security practices are implemented in the smart home is critical. This study proposes a Home Area Network architecture design, and secure ChaCha20-Poly1305 Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) based authentication scheme, based on the recent LoRa 2.4 GHz technology; a robust and highly tunable transmission technology. This results in a network that balances performance considerations, whilst providing confidentiality, integrity and authenticity through the use of symmetric key-based authentication and encryption scheme. A performance analysis is conducted using a practical test bench to determine the impact that the proposed security mechanisms have on the LoRa network. The secure architecture proposed by this study has a minimal impact on the transmission time of a packet compared to a network with no security measures. This additional latency does not negatively impact on the smart home user in terms of network performance.

Electric field energy harvesters (EFEHs) are reliable and sustainable power sources that may be used to power wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) in urban Internet of Things (IoT) networks, replacing traditional batteries. Despite the technology’s effectiveness, large-scale deployments raise severe environmental concerns about fabrication material degradation and recycling. In this context, this work analyzes the performance of the natural green leaves as a replacement for standard electrodes in EFEH developments. To this end, different $10\times 3$ cm2 EFEHs were assembled with raw leaves from the following species Magnolia Obovata, Ravenala Madagascariensis, Acanthus Mollis, and Agapanthus Africanus. Each harvester was evaluated at different drying steps, concluding that natural leaves may collect electrostatic charges related to the urban electric field, which might power ultra-low-energy devices. Experimental results reveal that Agapanthus Africanus electrodes perform best, with an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 111.88 V and a short-circuit current (ISC) of 229.09 nA. On the other hand, the VOC of Magnolia Obavata leaves achieved 76.76 V, and the ISC was 135.30 nA (the worst case). Although the performance for Ravenala Madagascariensis samples is less than Agapanthus Africanus ones, the size leaf is another critical parameter to design functional devices. Therefore, the experimental section also includes the conceptualization, design, and experimental testing of a functional EFEH prototype called Leaf-EFEH, which is assembled with Ravenala Madagascariensis leaves. Finally, numerous experiments have shown that the proposed Leaf-EFEH can power ultra-low-power devices.

This letter analyzes the performance of a dynamic home area network (HAN) for smart grid communication using space shift keying modulation and energy harvesting. HAN plays a vital role in communication between home appliances and smart meters. The network considered here is with the multiple numbers of transmitting antennas at each home appliance and a single receiving antenna at the smart meter, which operates under the Saleh-Valenzuela channel. The average bit error probability performance of the indoor HAN with wireless power communication is derived in closed form by implementing the multi-user selection combining method. The numerical results and simulation results are presented to illustrate the impact of energy harvesting on system performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have connected millions of houses around the globe via the internet. In the recent past, threats due to hardware Trojan (HT) in the integrated circuits (IC) have become a serious concern, which affects IoT edge devices (IoT-ED). In this paper, the possibility of the IoT-ED with embedded HT that can cause serious security, privacy, and availability problems to the IoT based Home Area Network (HAN) has been discussed. Conventional network attack detection techniques work at the network protocol layers, whereas IoT-ED with HT can lead to the peculiar manifestation of attack at the physical and/or firmware level. On the other hand, in the IC design, most of the HT-based attack detection techniques require design time intervention, which is expensive for many of the IoT-ED and cannot guarantee 100% immunity. The argument in this paper is that the health of modern IoT-ED requires a final line of defense against possible HT-based attacks that goes undetected during IC design and test. The approach is to utilize power profiling (PP) and network traffic (NT) data without intervening into the IC design to detect malicious activity in HAN. The proposed technique is to effectively identify multiple attacks concurrently and to differentiate between different types of attacks. The IoT-ED behaviors for five different types of random attacks have been studied, including covert channel, DoS, ARQ, power depletion, and impersonation attacks. Data fusion has been leveraged by combining the PP and NT data and is able to detect, without design time intervention, each of the five attacks individually with up to 99% accuracy. Moreover, the proposed technique can also detect all the attacks concurrently with 92% accuracy. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first work where multiple HT based attacks are concurrently detected in IoT-ED without requiring any design time intervention.

Smart grid is an intelligent power distribution system that employs dual communication between the energy devices and the substation. Dual communication helps to overseer the internet access points, energy meters, and power demand of the entire grid. Deployment of advanced communication and control technologies makes smart grid system efficient for energy availability and low-cost maintenance. Appropriate algorithms are analyzed first for the convenient grid to have proper routing and security with a high-level of power transmission and distribution. Information and Communication Technology plays a significant role in monitoring, demand response, and control of the energy distribution. This paper presents a broad review of communication and network technologies with regard to Internet of Things, Machine to Machine Communication, and Cognitive radio terminologies which comprises 5G technology. Networks suitable for future smart-grid are compared with respect to standard protocols, data rate, throughput, delay, security, and routing. Approaches adopted for the smart-grid system has been commended based on the performance and the parameters observed. ©2019. CBIORE-IJRED. All rights reserved

There are many publications that describe the functions of smart meters. The paper presents two innovative features of a smart energy meter: automatic Power Factor Correction (PFC), autonomous under-frequency load shedding. Introduction of such solutions on mass scale would bring significant savings, great advantages for reliable and efficient operation of the power systems and little inconvenience for the customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart Grid (SG) is a modernized power grid. Nowadays changing the power grid system into a smart grid is revolution and evolution. Owing to the widespread use of wireless communication technologies in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) of SG, security is one of the most significant and challenging problem. A specific feature of AMI systems is that it requires hybrid transmission modes of data which includes unicast, multicast and broadcast communication modes. Moreover, Smart Meters (SMs) and smart home appliances may have limited computing and storage capability and only authorized Home Area Network (HAN) appliances may communicate with SMs. Various key management systems have been presented to address these issues. However, performance and /or security issues are still exist in most of them. To meet these distinctive requirements and ensure confidentiality during communications in HAN of AMI, secure and robust key management scheme is required. This paper proposes a key management scheme tailored for HAN with significantly lower rekeying overhead and enhanced robustness which allows the SM and HAN devices to share a session key between them. In our scheme, when any smart device joins/leaves the system, there is no need to update the keys of existing devices. As a result, the rekeying cost is decreased to O 1 . Compared with existing key management schemes, the proposed scheme achieves fast key distribution and message transmission between SM and the HAN devices while ensuring the privacy. The results illustrate that our scheme can outperform the related schemes in terms of rekeying cost while ensuring privacy protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart societies have an increasing demand for quality-oriented services and infrastructure in an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) paradigm. Smart urbanization faces numerous challenges. Among them, secured energy demand-side management (DSM) is of particular concern. The IIoT renders the industrial systems to malware, cyberattacks, and other security risks. The IIoT with the amalgamation of big data analytics can provide efficient solutions to such challenges. This paper proposes a secured and trusted multilayered DSM engine for a smart social society using IIoT-based big data analytics. The major objective is to provide a generic secured solution for smart societies in IIoT environment. The proposed engine uses a centralized approach to achieve optimum DSM over a home area network. To enhance the security of this engine, a payload-based authentication scheme is utilized that relies on a lightweight handshake mechanism. Our proposed method utilizes the lightweight features of the constrained application protocol to facilitate the clients in monitoring various resources residing over the server in an energy-efficient manner. In addition, data streams are processed using big data analytics with MapReduce parallel processing. The proposed authentication approach is evaluated using NetDuino Plus 2 boards that yield a lower connection overhead, memory consumption, response time, and a robust defense against various malicious attacks. On the other hand, our data processing approach is tested on reliable datasets using Apache Hadoop with Apache Spark to verify the proposed DMS engine. The test results reveal that the proposed architecture offers valuable insights into the smart social societies in the context of IIoT.

Smart grid is an intelligent power distribution system that employs dual communication between the energy devices and the substation. Dual communication helps to overseer the internet access points, energy meters, and power demand of the entire grid. Deployment of advanced communication and control technologies makes smart grid system efficient for energy availability and low-cost maintenance. Appropriate algorithms are analyzed first for the convenient grid to have proper routing and security with a high-level of power transmission and distribution. Information and Communication Technology plays a significant role in monitoring, demand response, and control of the energy distribution. This paper presents a broad review of communication and network technologies with regard to Internet of Things, Machine to Machine Communication, and Cognitive radio terminologies which comprises 5G technology. Networks suitable for future smart-grid are compared with respect to standard protocols, data rate, throughput, delay, security, and routing. Approaches adopted for the smart-grid system has been commended based on the performance and the parameters observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because traditional electronics cannot directly use the alternating output voltage and current provided by electric field energy harvesters, harvesting systems require additional regulating and conditioning circuits. In this field, this work presents a conditioning circuit, called serial switch-only rectifier (SSOR) for low-voltage electric field energy harvesting (EFEH) applications. The proposed approach consists of a tubular topology harvester mounted on the outer jacket of a 230 V three-wires electrical cable (neutral, ground, and phase), in which terminals are connected to SSOR. We compare SSOR performance with classic electronic approaches, such as a full-bridge rectifier and voltage doubler. Experimental findings showed that the gathered energy by a 1 m cylindrical harvester increased in approximately 73.3% using the SSOR as a power management circuit. Experimental findings showed that the gathered energy by a 1 m cylindrical harvester increase in approximately 73.3% using the SSOR as a power management circuit. This increase is principally due to the fact that a serial bidirectional switch disconnects the harvester from the rest of the management circuit, enhancing the charge collection process. Although simulated results disclosed that SSOR increased collected energy for smaller-scale harvesters (experimental tests obtained using a 10 cm cylindrical harvester), additional losses in bidirectional switch reduced its performance. In addition, we introduce a comprehensive analysis of EFEH systems based on SSOR according to the mains frequency for future power systems.

A power 'Grid' is a network that carries electricity from power plants to consumer premises. The grid is made 'smart' as it can monitor and control the distribution system by taking intelligent decisions. Smart Grid is an automated and broadly distributed energy generation, transmission and distribution network. Smart Grid network integrates an electrical distribution system with information and communication network. Communication network protocols are engineered, developed and established based on the layered approach. Each layer is designed to serve a specific functionality in collaboration with other layers. Layered approach for wired communication approach can be modified with cross layer approach for wireless communication for performance enhancement. Smart grid technology comprises of hierarchical and heterogeneous network with diverse set of communication protocols. This demands a divergence from primitive approach and adaptation of an innovative approach. This paper describes network design and optimization of routing protocol for Smart grid Neighborhood Area Network using Riverbed-OPNET software. A Cross layer approach is considered in parameter optimization of IEEE 802.11 standard. The proposed work shows parameter optimization of routing protocol for better network performance using simulation approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the analysis of the power quality within a Smart Home, powered of an 400/230 V switchboard, powered by an transformer station, with the apparent nominal power of 1600 kVA and the voltage of 20 /0.4 kV. For this purpose, a network analyser, mounted on the 400/230 V distribution board (on the Smart Home power line), was used to record and monitor the following quality parameters: voltage, current, harmonic current and voltage, active and reactive power, energy absorbed and injected into the National Power System, power factor. The graphs presented, made with the analyser software used, lead to the development of solutions for the reduction of the energy demand and implicitly to the improvement of the energy efficiency, through the development of an adequate energy management system within Smart Home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the problem of improving the medium access control (MAC) layer efficiency in indoor broadband power line communication networks. Several overheads in the MAC layer, like random back-offs and collision recovery, degrade the MAC efficiency. To reduce these overheads, we apply in-band full-duplexing (IBFD), which enables medium-aware transmission at all the network nodes. Specifically, we propose two new schemes called contention-free pre-sensing and mutual preamble detection to minimize the time spent during contentions and collisions. Considering the non-idealities of IBFD, we analytically show the feasibility of our solutions. We further design a comprehensive simulation model with multiple priority data frames and Poisson network traffic arrival to emulate a real in-home network traffic. We then present numerical results for both the classical saturated network model and the comprehensive traffic model, to show through OMNeT++ simulations that our presented solutions achieve over 95% of the optimum MAC efficiency that can only be attained in the idealized case of no contentions or collisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several situations in a microgrid (MG) cause unbalances leading to voltage and frequency variations. Conventionally MG power balance is ensured by storage battery units along with unscheduled load shedding. This paper presents control and management strategies to coordinate MG resources including generation, smart electric vehicles, and loads for frequency and voltage regulation to achieve optimal autonomous operation. MG control is designed in two layers of network, i.e., neighbour area network (NAN) and house area network (HAN). MG central controller operates at NAN layer, local load controllers operate at HAN layer, and smart electric vehicle controllers operate at both NAN and HAN layers. Two strategies—comprehensive control (CC) and vehicle aided CC—are developed and implemented in 11/0.4 kV urban residential four-feeder distribution system operating as MG. Both strategies enable calculative load manipulation for demand response (DR) considering customer load priority, thus maximizing customer satisfaction. The simulation results validate the proposed strategies providing frequency regulation and DR for MG autonomous operation. The proposed control and management strategy also provides an on-line tool for household maximum demand allocation and load management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The world needs renewable energy for the long-term future. One of the most promising renewable energy solar PV is ideal for buildings and rooftop. However, the uptake of solar PV in developing countries is rather slow. Mostly because it is expensive but also because heavy electrical appliances cannot be operated on small scale PV systems. In this paper, we present an approach to operate high powered devices on small-scale PV systems. In our approach, we have designed a platform called Smart Energy Switching Platform (SESP). A software layer on top of SESP allows the devices to follow a collaborative scheme where high power devices are moved to an on-state if enough power is available. With this approach, multiple high powered devices with transients can be operated with a smaller PV system. We have evaluated our approach using many simulation scenarios and has presented a case study to describe the working of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the smart grid infrastructure based power systems, it is necessary to consider the demand side management to enhance the energy reduction and system control. In many countries the resources are very less so the available resources have to be used in an efficient manner without any loss. The total loss cannot be avoided but it can be reduced. In the proposed system, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique is used to distribute the power in the smart grid. Here, the grids are arranged in such a way that the losses in it are reduced. The load connected to the grid is rearranged according to their use. It uses a new and stochastic scheduling technique to handle the uncertainties in the power system. Solar and wind power are taken in account for twenty four hours and the values are given to the PSO algorithm. The experiment was conducted by MATLAB and the results show that the efficiency level of wind and solar power systems was increased by an appreciable level. The proposed technique is compared with the normal system without using Demand Side Management (DSM) and it shows that the proposed system gives better results than the existing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart meters (SMs) are key components of the smart grid (SG) which gather electricity usage data from residences and businesses. Home area networks (HANs) are used to support two-way communications between SMs and devices within a building such as appliances. This can be implemented using power line communications (PLCs) via home wiring topologies. In this paper, a bottom-up approach is designed and a HAN-PLC channel model is obtained for a split-phase power system which includes branch circuits, an electric panel with circuit breakers and bars, a secondary transformer and the wiring of neighboring residences. A cell division (CD) method is proposed to construct the channel model. Furthermore, arc fault circuit interrupter (AFCI) and ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) circuit breaker models are developed. Several HAN-PLC channels are presented and compared with those obtained using existing models.

The main purpose of the application of cognitive radio (CR) technology in the Home Area Network (HAN) of smart grid is to improve the spectrum utilization. Power control is one of the main ways of improving spectrum efficiency and spectrum sharing. By reducing the interference between secondary users (SXJs), users' signal to interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) is improved so as to ensure the normal communications among SXJs. We study three power control algorithms in the performance of home area access control network of smart grid based on CR technology. Simulation results show that the three algorithms have rapid convergence and high efficiency, which can reduce the system overhead to a certain extent and improve the network performance, thus having very good guidance significance for practical engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smartgrid is a next-generation intelligent electrical grid that enables a two-way information exchange between a customer and an electricity provider by integrating ICT (information and communications technology) into the existing electrical grid. As ICT is applied to the electrical grid, the security vulnerabilities of the existing ICT are inherited into the Smartgrid environment. These vulnerabilities could also apply to the electrical grid features. Therefore, a security technology to cope with such vulnerabilities should be investigated. In this paper, in order to study a HAN (Home Area Network) of Smartgrid that primarily handles customers' personal information, we propose a HAN-centric Smartgrid logical architecture, based on the analysis of existing reference models. Further, we propose a security architecture that was made by applying security functions to the HAN logical architecture to prevent security threats, which can happen because of the security vulnerabilities in a Smartgrid environment. Finally, by conducting a scenario-based verification, we demonstrate that the security effects of the proposed security architecture can protect the HAN users' personal information and smoothly provide services for users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various short-range optical connections, transmitting either high-bit-rate digital signals or radio frequency analog signals, can exploit 850-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers as optical source together with the standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) as optical channel. This solution presents attractive features in terms of reduced cost and energy consumption. However, bandwidth reduction due to intermodal dispersion and undesired fluctuations of the received signal due to modal noise are present in this case. Such effects are studied theoretically and experimentally, and a cost-effective solution is proposed to reduce their impact. Hence, connections with SSMF length up to 300 m with 3-dB bandwidth of 2500 MHz are demonstrated, while the modal noise is reduced to a standard deviation of less than 2 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the world is moving towards Internet of Things, smart home is now rapidly becoming a reality. Home appliances and devices are interconnected, i.e., home area network, via proprietary or standard TCP/IP protocols allowing for better management and monitoring. Nevertheless, as with any form of network, smart home is also prone to security threats and vulnerabilities. This paper aims at presenting the importance of security in smart home environment. Herein, we will discuss (a) the concepts of smart home environment, (b) various smart home communication mechanisms, (c) security challenges and concerns in smart home environment, (d) security threats in smart home environment, (e) current security measures to encounter such security attacks and finally, conclusion and future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electricity grid is undergoing a radical transformation from a production-driven to a demand-driven energy delivery platform known as the smart grid. The integration of a large amount of renewable and distributed energy resources, together with new patterns of electricity production, accentuates the need for research in information and communication technologies to control bi-directional energy flows. The European FP7 project: 'Energy Demand Aware Open Services for Smart Grid Intelligent Automation' is contributing to this research by providing an intelligent infrastructure for service deployment for the smart grid. The project defines a system architecture that provides interoperability between wireless sensors in home area networks connected over the Internet to a service provider function deployed in a cloud infrastructure. A key component in this infrastructure is the Home Energy Controlling Hub that, on the one hand, provides a platform for monitoring and aggregation of electricity consumption data from devices and appliances and, on the other hand, is the link between the deployed intelligent automation services and the home. To ensure openness and simplicity, the proposed infrastructure is based on the representational state transfer style architecture. This is adopted by implementing the emerging ZigBee IP and Smart Energy Profile 2.0 standards that to a wide extend conform with the Internet Protocol suite and state-of-the art web services development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]