Network-simulation-based evaluation of smart grid applications

The United States and many other countries are conducting a major upgrade of their electrical grids. The new “smart grid” is not a physically isolated network like the older power grid was, but a complicated network of networks. That greatly increases the security concerns, ranging from hackers who gain access to control networks or create denial-of-service attacks on the networks themselves, to accidental causes, such as natural disasters or operator errors. Therefore, it is critical to build a safe, resilient and secure communication environment for protecting the smart grid. Under this central theme, our research work has two strongly correlated streams. First, to analyze large-scale networked systems (e.g., smart grid communication networks) with high fidelity, it is necessary for a testing system to offer both effective emulation (to represent critical software execution) and realistic simulation (to model background computation and communication). We have developed a network testbed using both parallel simulation and virtual- machine-based, virtual-time-embedded emulation to provide both functional and temporal fidelity for running large-scale networking experiments, so that technologies can be appropriately evaluated with modeling and simulation methodologies as well as with real software/hardware testing before they are integrated into the grid. Second, we have utilized the testbed to study various cyber attacks in the smart grid, including a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) in an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and an event buffer flooding attack on a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system (both for the Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and also used it to evaluate a demand response design in a hierarchical transactive control network (as part of the Pacific Northwest smart grid demonstration project).

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Jin, Dong

Contributors dc:contributor

• Nicol, David M.
• Caesar, Matthew C.
• Bobba, Rakesh
• Sanders, William H.

• Smart Grid
• Network Security
• Parallel Discrete Event Simulation
• Network Emulation
• virtual time

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2013 Dong Jin

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45427

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/45427