Lightweight Multidimensional Encrypted Data Aggregation Scheme With Fault Tolerance for Fog-Assisted Smart Grids

Encrypted data aggregation is an effective approach to preserve power consumption data confidentiality as well as reduce communication overhead in smart grids. As the core component of smart grids, smart meters periodically report encrypted multidimensional data to an aggregator gateway. However, heavy computation and communication overhead may hinder the wide applications of smart meters. Besides, once the secret key is leaked, encrypted data will be broken, thereby violating users’ privacy. In this article, we present a lightweight multidimensional encryption data aggregation (MD-EDA) scheme, enabling a grid control center to retrieve fine-grain aggregated data in a confidential way. In particular, each fog node is installed at the edge of networks, playing the role of aggregator gateway for data verification and aggregation in the same grid area. MD-EDA prevents adversaries from extracting valuable data even if the secret key is compromised. MD-EDA exploits Shamir secret-sharing technique to achieve transmission fault tolerance mechanism from smart meters to a corresponding fog node. The performance evaluation demonstrates the lightweight computation advantages of MD-EDA in the deployment of fog-assisted smart grids.