Secure Real-Time Industrial IoT Communications in Smart Grids Using Named Data Networking

This paper explores Named Data Networking (NDN) for secure Industrial IoT (IIoT) communications in smart grid applications. NDN is a next generation networking paradigm, which is data-centric and has the benefit of built-in security properties, such as data integrity. This work applies NDN to IEEE C37.118.2 PMU communications, as an example smart grid IIoT application, and proposes a new data-encapsulation approach for NDN for low latency data streaming. The proposed communication architecture allows sensor data streaming with a lower overhead compared to related work. Communications are demonstrated to be secured using a trust anchor which protects data integrity and provides data authentication, while supporting optional data encryption. The proposed solution represents IEEE C37.118.2 in a JSON format, which provides flexibility and facilitates application of the approach to different use cases.