Arif I. Sarwat

Aditya Sundararajan, Arif I. Sarwat, Alexander Pons

Biometric research is directed increasingly towards Wearable Biometric Systems (WBS) for user authentication and identification. However, prior to engaging in WBS research, how their operational dynamics and design considerations differ from those of Traditional Biometric Systems (TBS) must be understood. While the current literature is cognizant of those differences, there is no effective work that summarizes the factors where TBS and WBS differ, namely, their modality characteristics, performance, security and privacy. To bridge the gap, this paper accordingly reviews and compares the key characteristics of modalities, contrasts the metrics used to evaluate system performance, and highlights the divergence in critical vulnerabilities, attacks and defenses for TBS and WBS. It further discusses how these factors affect the design considerations for WBS, the open challenges and future directions of research in these areas. In doing so, the paper provides a big-picture overview of the important avenues of challenges and potential solutions that researchers entering the field should be aware of. Hence, this survey aims to be a starting point for researchers in comprehending the fundamental differences between TBS and WBS before understanding the core challenges associated with WBS and its design.

Aditya Sundararajan, Tanwir Khan, Amir Moghadasi et al.

Synchrophasor devices guarantee situation awareness for real-time monitoring and operational visibility of the smart grid. With their widespread implementation, significant challenges have emerged, especially in communication, data quality and cybersecurity. The existing literature treats these challenges as separate problems, when in reality, they have a complex interplay. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of quality and cybersecurity challenges for synchrophasors, and identifies the interdependencies between them. It also summarizes different methods used to evaluate the dependency and surveys how quality checking methods can be used to detect potential cyber-attacks. In doing so, this paper serves as a starting point for researchers entering the fields of synchrophasor data analytics and security.

Syed Rahman, Haneen Aburub, Yemeserach Mekonnen et al.

Recent changes to greenhouse gas emission policies are catalyzing the electric vehicle (EV) market making it readily accessible to consumers. While there are challenges that arise with dense deployment of EVs, one of the major future concerns is cyber security threat. In this paper, cyber security threats in the form of tampering with EV battery's State of Charge (SOC) was explored. A Back Propagation (BP) Neural Network (NN) was trained and tested based on experimental data to estimate SOC of battery under normal operation and cyber-attack scenarios. NeuralWare software was used to run scenarios. Different statistic metrics of the predicted values were compared against the actual values of the specific battery tested to measure the stability and accuracy of the proposed BP network under different operating conditions. The results showed that BP NN was able to capture and detect the false entries due to a cyber-attack on its network.

Longfei Wei, Luis Puche Rondon, Amir Moghadasi et al.

The Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is a vital element in the current development of the smart grid. AMI technologies provide electric utilities with an effective way of continuous monitoring and remote control of smart grid components. However, owing to its increasing scale and cyber-physical nature, the AMI has been faced with security threats in both cyber and physical domains. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the crucial cyber-physical attacks and counter defense mechanisms in the AMI. First, two attack surfaces are surveyed in the AMI including the communication network and smart meters. The potential cyber-physical attacks are then reviewed for each attack surface. Next, the attack models and their cyber and physical impacts on the smart grid are studied for comparison. Counter defense mechanisms that help mitigate these security threats are discussed. Finally, several mathematical tools which may help in analysis and implementation of security solutions are summarized.

Imtiaz Parvez, Arif I. Sarwat, Jonathan Pinto et al.

The uprising interest in multi-agent based networked system, and the numerous number of applications in the distributed control of the smart grid leads us to address the problem of time synchronization in the smart grid. Utility companies look for new packet based time synchronization solutions with Global Positioning System (GPS) level accuracies beyond traditional packet methods such as Network Time Proto- col (NTP). However GPS based solutions have poor reception in indoor environments and dense urban canyons as well as GPS antenna installation might be costly. Some smart grid nodes such as Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), fault detection, Wide Area Measurement Systems (WAMS) etc., requires synchronous accuracy as low as 1 ms. On the other hand, 1 sec accuracy is acceptable in management information domain. Acknowledging this, in this study, we introduce gossip algorithm based clock synchronization method among network entities from the decision control and communication point of view. Our method synchronizes clock within dense network with a bandwidth limited environment. Our technique has been tested in different kinds of network topologies- complete, star and random geometric network and demonstrated satisfactory performance.