PRIVACY PRESERVATION IN A HYBRID MULTI MESH-LTE AMI NETWORK FOR SMART GRID

While the newly envisioned Smart(er) Grid (SG) will result in a more efficient and reliable power grid, its collection and use of fine-grained meter data has widely raised concerns on consumer privacy. While a number of approaches are available for preserving consumer privacy, these approaches are mostly not very practical to be used due to two reasons: First, since the data is hidden, this reduces the ability of the utility company to use the data for distribution state estimation. Secondly and more importantly, the approaches were not tested under realistic wireless infrastructures that are currently in use. In this thesis, a meter data obfuscation approach to preserve consumer privacy is proposed to implement that has the ability to perform distribution state estimation. Then, its performance on LTE and a large-scale Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) network built upon the new IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh standard are assessed. LTE/EPC(Evolved Packet Core) model is used between the gateway and the utility. EPC\u27s goal is to improve network performance by the separation of control and data planes and through a flattened IP architecture, which reduces the hierarchy between mobile data elements. Using obfuscation values provided via this approach, the meter readings are obfuscated to protect consumer privacy from eavesdroppers and the utility companies while preserving the utility companies\u27 ability to use the data for state estimation.The impact of this approach on data throughput, delay and packet delivery ratio under a variety of conditions are assessed