Chapter Securing the Home Energy Management Platform

Recently, many efforts have been done to chemically functionalize sensors surface to achieve selectivity towards diagnostics targets, such as DNA, RNA fragments and protein tumoural biomarkers, through the surface immobilization of the related specific receptor. Especially, some kind of sensors such as microcantilevers (gravimetric sensors) and one-dimensional photonics crystals (optical sensors) able to couple Bloch surface waves are very sensitive. Thus, any kind of surface modifications devoted to functionalize them has to be finely controlled in terms of mass and optical characteristics, such as refractive index, to minimize the perturbation, on the transduced signal, that can affect the response sensitivity towards the detected target species

Securing the Home Energy Management Platform

Energy management in households gets increasingly more attention in the struggle to integrate more sustainable energy sources. Especially in the electrical system, smart grid systems are envisioned to be part in the efforts towards a better utilisation of the energy production and distribution infrastructure. The Home Energy Management System (HEMS) is a critical infrastructure component in this endeavour. Its main goal is to enable energy services utilising smart devices in the households based on the interest of the residential consumers and external actors. With the role of being both an essential link in the communication infrastructure for balancing the electrical grid and a surveillance unit in private homes, security and privacy become essential to address. In this chapter, we identify and address potential threats Home Energy Management Platform (HEMP) developers should consider in the progress of designing architecture, selecting hardware and building software. Our approach starts with a general view of the involved stakeholders and the HEMS. Given the system overview, a threat model is constructed from the HEMP developer\u27s point of view. Based on the threats that have been detected, possible mitigation strategies are proposed taking into account the state of the art of technology for securing platforms

Virtual Power Plant for Smart Grid Ready Buildings and Customers

This report contains a summary of results from the ForskEL project: Virtual Power Plant for Smart Grid Ready Buildings and Customers

Towards the use of Pairing-Based Cryptography for Resource-Constrained Home Area Networks

Abstract-In the prevailing smart grid, the Home Area Network (HAN) will become a critical infrastructure component at the consumer premises. The HAN provides the electricity infrastructure with a bi-directional communication infrastructure that allows monitoring and control of electrical appliances. HANs are typically equipped with wireless sensors and actuators, built from resource-constrained hardware devices, that communicate by using open standard protocols. This raises concerns on the security of these networked systems. Because of this, securing a HAN to a proper degree becomes an increasingly important task. In this paper, a security model, where an adversary may exploit the system both during HAN setup as well as during operations of the network, is considered. We propose a scheme for secure bootstrapping of wireless HAN devices based on IdentityBased Cryptography (IBC). The scheme minimizes the number of exchanged messages needed to establish a session key between HAN devices. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated from a series of prototype experiments

On the queuing delay of time-varying channels in Low Earth Orbit satellite constellations

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are envisioned as a complementary or integrated part of 5G and future 6G networks for broadband or massive access, given their capabilities of full Earth coverage in inaccessible or very isolated environments. Although the queuing and end-to-end delays of such networks have been analyzed for channels with fixed statistics, currently there is a lack in understanding the effects of more realistic time-varying channels for traffic aggregation across such networks. Therefore, in this work we propose a queuing model for LEO constellation-based networks that captures the inherent variability of realistic satellite channels, where ground-to-satellite/satellite-to-ground links may present extremely poor connection periods due to the Land Mobile Satellite (LMS) channel. We verify the validity of our model with an extensive event-driven simulator framework analysis capturing the characteristics of the considered scenario. We later study the queuing and end-to-end delay distributions under such channels with various link, traffic, packet and background conditions, while observing good match between theory and simulation. Our results show that ground-to-satellite/satellite-to-ground links and background traffic have a much stronger impact over the end-to-end delay in mean and particularly variance, even with moderate queues, than unobstructed inter-satellite connections in outer space on an established path between two ground stations and through the constellation. This might hinder the usability of these networks for services with stringent time requirements.This work was supported in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant 861111, in part by the Innovation Fund Denmark Project Drones4Energy under Project J.nr.8057-00038A, and in part by the Spanish Government through the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (MINECO-FEDER) by the Project Future Internet Enabled Resilient smart CitiEs (FIERCE) under Grant RTI2018-093475-AI00

Finite buffer queuing delay performance in the low earth orbit land mobile satellite channel

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations have been identified for new massive access networks, as a complement to traditional cellular ones, due to their native ubiquity. Despite being a feasible alternative, such networks still raise questions on their performance, in particular regarding the delay and queuing management under realistic channels. In this work, we study the queuing delay of a single satellite-to-ground link, considering a Land Mobile Satellite (LMS) channel in LEO with finite buffer lengths. We analyze the trade-off between delay and packet loss probability, using a novel model based on Markov chains, which we assess and extend with an extensive analysis carried out by means of system level simulation. The developed tools capture with accuracy the queuing delay statistical behavior in the S and Ka frequency bands, where LEO communications are planned to be deployed. Our results show that we can use short buffers to ensure less than 5-10% packet loss, with tolerable delays in such bands.This project was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 re search and innovation program, Drones4Safety-agreement No 861111, the Innovation Fund Denmark project Drones4Energy with project J. nr. 8057-00038A and by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, MINECO-FEDER) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient Smart CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-AI00)

Guest editorial : Introduction to the special issue on connected vehicles in intelligent transportation systems

Connected vehicles (CVs) are one of the critical components of intelligent transportation systems. CVs enable any vehicle to act as a smart node that collects and shares information on vehicles, roads, and their surroundings. This information can then be distributed to other vehicles via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, and also to road users via vehicle-to-human (V2H) communication, for an improved driving experience. The information can also be forwarded toward traffic control systems via vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, for improved traffic management and road safety. Making use of of connected vehicles in intelligent transportation systems will revolutionize the way we drive. Many issues, however, need to be resolved to achieve better performance of connected vehicles. Improvements relate to data processing and storage, the development of standards and regulations across all platforms, design and deployment of new communication protocols and system architectures, and the creation and introduction of new services and applications.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6979hj2018Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin