Exploring Malicious Meter Inspection in Neighborhood Area Smart Grids

Abstract—In smart grids, smart meters may potentially be at-tacked or compromised to cause certain security risks. It is chal-lenging to identify malicious meters when there are a large number of users. In this paper, we explore the malicious meter inspection (MMI) problem in neighborhood area smart grids. We propose a suite of inspection algorithms in a progressive manner. First, we present a basic scanningmethod, which takes linear time to accom-plish inspection. The scanning method is efficient when the mali-cious meter ratio is high. Then, we propose a binary-tree-based in-spection algorithm, which performs better than scanning when the malicious meter ratio is low. Finally, we employ an adaptive-tree-based algorithm, which leverages advantages of both the scanning and binary-tree inspections. Our approaches are tailored to fit both static and dynamic situations. The theoretical and experimental re-sults have shown the effectiveness of the adaptive tree approach. Index Terms—Accountability, advancedmetering infrastructure (AMI), attack, malicious meter inspection, security, smart grid, smart meter. I