Ye Yan

Bio: Ye Yan is an academic researcher from University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The author has contributed to research in topics: Smart grid & Authentication. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 11 publications receiving 2635 citations.

A Survey on Smart Grid CommunicationInfrastructures: Motivations, Requirements andChallenges

Abstract: A communication infrastructure is an essential part to the success of the emerging smart grid. A scalable and pervasive communication infrastructure is crucial in both construction and operation of a smart grid. In this paper, we present the background and motivation of communication infrastructures in smart grid systems. We also summarize major requirements that smart grid communications must meet. From the experience of several industrial trials on smart grid with communication infrastructures, we expect that the traditional carbon fuel based power plants can cooperate with emerging distributed renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc, to reduce the carbon fuel consumption and consequent green house gas such as carbon dioxide emission. The consumers can minimize their expense on energy by adjusting their intelligent home appliance operations to avoid the peak hours and utilize the renewable energy instead. We further explore the challenges for a communication infrastructure as the part of a complex smart grid system. Since a smart grid system might have over millions of consumers and devices, the demand of its reliability and security is extremely critical. Through a communication infrastructure, a smart grid can improve power reliability and quality to eliminate electricity blackout. Security is a challenging issue since the on-going smart grid systems facing increasing vulnerabilities as more and more automation, remote monitoring/controlling and supervision entities are interconnected.

A Survey on Smart Grid Communication Infrastructures: Motivations, Requirements and Challenges

Abstract: A communication infrastructure is an essential part to the success of the emerging smart grid. A scalable and pervasive communication infrastructure is crucial in both construction and operation of a smart grid. In this paper, we present the background and motivation of communication infrastructures in smart grid systems. We also summarize major requirements that smart grid communications must meet. From the experience of several industrial trials on smart grid with communication infrastructures, we expect that the traditional carbon fuel based power plants can cooperate with emerging distributed renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc, to reduce the carbon fuel consumption and consequent green house gas such as carbon dioxide emission. The consumers can minimize their expense on energy by adjusting their intelligent home appliance operations to avoid the peak hours and utilize the renewable energy instead. We further explore the challenges for a communication infrastructure as the part of a complex smart grid system. Since a smart grid system might have over millions of consumers and devices, the demand of its reliability and security is extremely critical. Through a communication infrastructure, a smart grid can improve power reliability and quality to eliminate electricity blackout. Security is a challenging issue since the on-going smart grid systems facing increasing vulnerabilities as more and more automation, remote monitoring/controlling and supervision entities are interconnected.

A Survey on Cyber Security for Smart Grid Communications

Abstract: A smart grid is a new form of electricity network with high fidelity power-flow control, self-healing, and energy reliability and energy security using digital communications and control technology. To upgrade an existing power grid into a smart grid, it requires significant dependence on intelligent and secure communication infrastructures. It requires security frameworks for distributed communications, pervasive computing and sensing technologies in smart grid. However, as many of the communication technologies currently recommended to use by a smart grid is vulnerable in cyber security, it could lead to unreliable system operations, causing unnecessary expenditure, even consequential disaster to both utilities and consumers. In this paper, we summarize the cyber security requirements and the possible vulnerabilities in smart grid communications and survey the current solutions on cyber security for smart grid communications.

An efficient security protocol for advanced metering infrastructure in smart grid

Abstract: In this article, we present a security protocol for advanced metering infrastructure in smart grid. We consider various security vulnerabilities of deploying AMI, and explore the issues related to confidentiality for user privacy and behavior as well as message authentication for meter reading and control messages. After surveying the existing security solutions in this area, we propose a new protocol, Integrated Authentication and Confidentiality (IAC), to provide efficient secure AMI communications in smart grid. With the help of IAC, an AMI system can provide trust services, data privacy, and integrity by mutual authentications whenever a new smart meter initiates and joins the smart grid AMI network. Data integrity and confidentiality are fulfilled through message authentication and encryption services, using the corresponding keys established in mutual authentications. Simulation and analytical results show that the proposed IAC protocol has better performance in terms of end-to-end delay and packet loss than a basic security scheme. Additionally, it can also facilitate efficient secure data collection and control message delivery between smart meters and a local collector for AMI communications in a smart grid.

A secure and reliable in-network collaborative communication scheme for advanced metering infrastructure in smart grid

Abstract: We consider various security vulnerabilities of deploying Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in smart grid, and explore the issues related to confidentiality for customer privacy and customer behavior as well as message authentication for meter reading and control messages There are only a very few research work on AMI authentications, and no work exists on confidentiality for user privacy and user behavior, from the best of our knowledge In this paper, we propose an in-network collaborative scheme to provide secure and reliable AMI communications in smart grid, with smart meters interconnected through a multihop wireless network In this approach, an AMI system can provide trust services, data privacy and integrity by mutual authentications whenever a new smart meter initiates and joins the smart grid AMI network Data integrity and confidentiality are fulfilled through message authentication and encryption services respectively using the corresponding keys established in the mutual authentications A transmission scheme is proposed to facilitate the data collection and management message delivery between smart meters and a local collector for AMI communications Simulation results show that the proposed method has a better end-to-end delay and packet losses comparing with a basic security method, and the proposed method can provide secure and reliable communications for AMI in smart grid systems

Internet of Things: A Survey on Enabling Technologies, Protocols, and Applications

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) with emphasis on enabling technologies, protocols, and application issues. The IoT is enabled by the latest developments in RFID, smart sensors, communication technologies, and Internet protocols. The basic premise is to have smart sensors collaborate directly without human involvement to deliver a new class of applications. The current revolution in Internet, mobile, and machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies can be seen as the first phase of the IoT. In the coming years, the IoT is expected to bridge diverse technologies to enable new applications by connecting physical objects together in support of intelligent decision making. This paper starts by providing a horizontal overview of the IoT. Then, we give an overview of some technical details that pertain to the IoT enabling technologies, protocols, and applications. Compared to other survey papers in the field, our objective is to provide a more thorough summary of the most relevant protocols and application issues to enable researchers and application developers to get up to speed quickly on how the different protocols fit together to deliver desired functionalities without having to go through RFCs and the standards specifications. We also provide an overview of some of the key IoT challenges presented in the recent literature and provide a summary of related research work. Moreover, we explore the relation between the IoT and other emerging technologies including big data analytics and cloud and fog computing. We also present the need for better horizontal integration among IoT services. Finally, we present detailed service use-cases to illustrate how the different protocols presented in the paper fit together to deliver desired IoT services.

A Survey on Smart Grid CommunicationInfrastructures: Motivations, Requirements andChallenges

Abstract: A communication infrastructure is an essential part to the success of the emerging smart grid. A scalable and pervasive communication infrastructure is crucial in both construction and operation of a smart grid. In this paper, we present the background and motivation of communication infrastructures in smart grid systems. We also summarize major requirements that smart grid communications must meet. From the experience of several industrial trials on smart grid with communication infrastructures, we expect that the traditional carbon fuel based power plants can cooperate with emerging distributed renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc, to reduce the carbon fuel consumption and consequent green house gas such as carbon dioxide emission. The consumers can minimize their expense on energy by adjusting their intelligent home appliance operations to avoid the peak hours and utilize the renewable energy instead. We further explore the challenges for a communication infrastructure as the part of a complex smart grid system. Since a smart grid system might have over millions of consumers and devices, the demand of its reliability and security is extremely critical. Through a communication infrastructure, a smart grid can improve power reliability and quality to eliminate electricity blackout. Security is a challenging issue since the on-going smart grid systems facing increasing vulnerabilities as more and more automation, remote monitoring/controlling and supervision entities are interconnected.

A Survey on Smart Grid Potential Applications and Communication Requirements

Abstract: Information and communication technologies (ICT) represent a fundamental element in the growth and performance of smart grids. A sophisticated, reliable and fast communication infrastructure is, in fact, necessary for the connection among the huge amount of distributed elements, such as generators, substations, energy storage systems and users, enabling a real time exchange of data and information necessary for the management of the system and for ensuring improvements in terms of efficiency, reliability, flexibility and investment return for all those involved in a smart grid: producers, operators and customers. This paper overviews the issues related to the smart grid architecture from the perspective of potential applications and the communications requirements needed for ensuring performance, flexible operation, reliability and economics.

A Survey on the Edge Computing for the Internet of Things

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) now permeates our daily lives, providing important measurement and collection tools to inform our every decision. Millions of sensors and devices are continuously producing data and exchanging important messages via complex networks supporting machine-to-machine communications and monitoring and controlling critical smart-world infrastructures. As a strategy to mitigate the escalation in resource congestion, edge computing has emerged as a new paradigm to solve IoT and localized computing needs. Compared with the well-known cloud computing, edge computing will migrate data computation or storage to the network “edge,” near the end users. Thus, a number of computation nodes distributed across the network can offload the computational stress away from the centralized data center, and can significantly reduce the latency in message exchange. In addition, the distributed structure can balance network traffic and avoid the traffic peaks in IoT networks, reducing the transmission latency between edge/cloudlet servers and end users, as well as reducing response times for real-time IoT applications in comparison with traditional cloud services. Furthermore, by transferring computation and communication overhead from nodes with limited battery supply to nodes with significant power resources, the system can extend the lifetime of the individual nodes. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive survey, analyzing how edge computing improves the performance of IoT networks. We categorize edge computing into different groups based on architecture, and study their performance by comparing network latency, bandwidth occupation, energy consumption, and overhead. In addition, we consider security issues in edge computing, evaluating the availability, integrity, and the confidentiality of security strategies of each group, and propose a framework for security evaluation of IoT networks with edge computing. Finally, we compare the performance of various IoT applications (smart city, smart grid, smart transportation, and so on) in edge computing and traditional cloud computing architectures.

A Survey on 5G Networks for the Internet of Things: Communication Technologies and Challenges

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising technology which tends to revolutionize and connect the global world via heterogeneous smart devices through seamless connectivity. The current demand for machine-type communications (MTC) has resulted in a variety of communication technologies with diverse service requirements to achieve the modern IoT vision. More recent cellular standards like long-term evolution (LTE) have been introduced for mobile devices but are not well suited for low-power and low data rate devices such as the IoT devices. To address this, there is a number of emerging IoT standards. Fifth generation (5G) mobile network, in particular, aims to address the limitations of previous cellular standards and be a potential key enabler for future IoT. In this paper, the state-of-the-art of the IoT application requirements along with their associated communication technologies are surveyed. In addition, the third generation partnership project cellular-based low-power wide area solutions to support and enable the new service requirements for Massive to Critical IoT use cases are discussed in detail, including extended coverage global system for mobile communications for the Internet of Things, enhanced machine-type communications, and narrowband-Internet of Things. Furthermore, 5G new radio enhancements for new service requirements and enabling technologies for the IoT are introduced. This paper presents a comprehensive review related to emerging and enabling technologies with main focus on 5G mobile networks that is envisaged to support the exponential traffic growth for enabling the IoT. The challenges and open research directions pertinent to the deployment of massive to critical IoT applications are also presented in coming up with an efficient context-aware congestion control mechanism.