Authenticated key agreement scheme based on blockchain for ami communication security

Security is the basis for the normal operation of advanced measurement infrastructure (AMI). As an important part of key management scheme, key establishment is indispensable in meeting AMI communication security requirements. Most proposed key management schemes rely on a trusted third party (TTP). Once there is a problem with TTP, the security of these schemes will be greatly reduced. Furthermore, the data concentrators (DCs) in traditional AMI architectures all manage smart meters (SMs) in their respective regions, and the lack of interaction between the DCs exposes a serious single point of failure. To alleviate these problems, we propose a blockchain-based authenticated key agreement scheme to secure the communication of AMI. In this scheme, the blockchain comprises DCs as network nodes that interact with the SMs. The proposed key agreement and distributed consensus protocol ensure the authenticity and validity of the communication content without relying on TTP. We analyse the resistance of the proposed protocol to multiple known attacks and evaluate its performance. The proposed protocol has higher security or better performance than other schemes.