Comparative study of various security algorithms used in smart meters

With the passage of time and with the dramatic improvements in the field of computers and communications, security gained prime importance especially in the real time and critical environments. Presently, the commonly used meters are electromechanical type based on the rotor element which revolves at a speed proportional to power flow and drives a mechanical registering device on which power consumption is integrated. The output is the sum of all the power consumed during the life time of the meter. This value is read manually by meter-readers, employed by the power companies specifically for this task. These conventional meters are more prone to tempering causing huge monetary loss to the power company. These losses can be reduced by making the monitoring of power consumption easy and free from human error or tempering, by using smart meters. In this article, chaos-based encryption techniques against the traditional or conventional encryption techniques are evaluated based on certain criteria using a MCDM (Multi Criteria Decision Making) tool.