Interoperable and Secure Communication for Cyber Physical Systems in the Energy Grid

A smart grid system constitutes a control loop, and recent research has tried to implement the loop using a cyber-physical system (CPS) model integrating physical processes (i.e., power flow) with networked computing capabilities. More specifically, the system aims to read/control energy resources in a physical domain for the purpose of energy balance. This requires each resource to be capable of accepting control command messages as well as sending out data, making bi-directional interactions with external entities. Regarding the interactions, we pose two research questions. (1) How to enable the interactions? (2) How to secure the interoperation? To answer the questions, this dissertation designs and develops an interoperable and secure communication model for cyber-physical systems and extends it to examine the realization of smart grid interoperation, the Internet of Energy (IoE). The contribution of the dissertation is three-fold. First, we develop a generic middleware model in which an object represents various physical functions and inter-communicates with other objects in a unified manner, maximizing the interoperability. Second, we conduct an experimental study. We develop and deploy a real-world testbed of Microgrid on our campus, on which we run a variety of energy services, demonstrating feasibility of the Internet of Energy. Last, we propose several schemes securing inter-networking in the cyber-physical systems. Access control mechanisms perform authentication and authorization in a fine-grained, prioritized manner, while an anti-jam key establishment algorithm makes objects' wireless communications faster and more robust against jamming attacks