A security protocol for wireless sensor networks designed for monitoring smart grid transmission lines

In this paper, we introduce a security protocol for wireless sensor network which is designed for monitoring long range power transmission lines in smart grid. The proposed security protocol provides authentications to the sensor nodes and the information data, and the encryption for uplink and downlink information of the power line monitoring sensor network. Different from the existing protocol, our proposed one has an auto-correction process to keep the network operating even with malfunctioning nodes. We also conduct energy consumption analysis and select more energy efficient authentication and encryption methods. In addition, the results of energy consumption analysis help to determine the transmitting power for each node so that the sensor network can meet the delay requirement at the same time.