Analysis of privacy-enhancing protocols based on anonymity networks

In this paper, we analyze privacy-enhancing protocols for Smart Grids that are based on anonymity networks. The underlying idea behind such protocols is attributing two distinct partial identities for each consumer. One is used to send real-time information about the power consumption, and the other for transmitting the billing information. Such protocols provide sender-anonymity for the real-time information, while consolidated data is sent for billing. In this work, the privacy properties of such protocols are analyzed, and their computational efficiency is evaluated and compared using simulation to other solutions based on homomorphic encryption.