Research on End-to-End Security Authentication Protocol of NB-IoT for Smart Grid Based on Physical Unclonable Function

Abstract

As a national strategic hot spot, the Internet of Things (IoT) has shown its vigor and vitality. With the development of IoT, its application in power grid is more and more extensive. As an advanced technology for information sensing and transmission, IoT has been applied extensively in power generation, transmission, transformation, distribution, utilization and other processes, and will develop with broad prospect in smart grid. Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is of broad application prospects in production management, life-cycle asset management and smart power utilization of smart grid. Its characteristics and security demands of application domain present a challenge for the security of electric power business. However, current protocols either need dual authentication and key agreements, or have poor compatibility with current network architecture. In order to improve the high security of power network data transmission, an end-to-end security authentication protocol of NB-IoT for smart grid based on physical unclonable function and state secret algorithm SM3 is proposed in this paper. A self-controllable NB-IoT application layer security architecture was designed by introducing the domestic cryptographic algorithm, extending the existing key derivation structure of LTE, and combining the physical unclonable function to ensure the generation of encryption keys between NB-IoT terminals and power grid business platforms. The protocol of this paper realizes secure data transmission and bidirectional identity authentication between IoT devices and terminals. It is of low communication costs, lightweight and flexible key update. In addition, the protocol also supports terminal authentication during key agreement, which furtherly enhances the security of business systems in smart grid.