Abstract

With the smart grid (SG) and the social Internet of Things (SIoT), an electric vehicle operator can use reliable, flexible, and efficient charging service with vehicle-to-grid (V2G). However, open channels can be vulnerable to various attacks by a malicious adversary. Therefore, secure mutual authentication for V2G has become essential, and numerous related protocols have been proposed. In 2018, Shen et al. proposed a privacy-preserving and lightweight key agreement protocol for V2G in SIoT to ensure security. However, we demonstrate that their protocol does not withstand impersonation, privileged-insider, and offline password guessing attacks, and it does not also guarantee secure mutual authentication, session key security, and perfect forward secrecy. Therefore, this paper proposes a dynamic privacy-preserving and lightweight key agreement protocol for V2G in SIoT to resolve the security weaknesses of Shen et al.'s protocol. The proposed protocol resists several attacks including impersonation, offline password guessing, man-in-the-middle, replay, and trace attacks, ensures anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, session key security, and secure mutual authentication. We evaluate the security of the proposed protocol using formal security analysis under the broadly-accepted real-or-random (ROR) model, secure mutual authentication proof using the widely-accepted Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, informal (non-mathematical) security analysis, and also the formal security verification using the broadly-accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool. We then compare computation costs, and security and functionality features of the proposed protocol with related protocols. Overall, the proposed protocol provides superior security, and it can be efficiently deployed to practical SIoT-based V2G environment.

Abstract

The devices in smart grids (SG) transfer data to a utility center (UC) or to the remote control centers. Using these data, the energy balance is maintained between consumers and the grid. However, this flow of data may be tampered by the intruders, which may result in energy imbalance. Thus, a robust authentication protocol, which supports dynamic SG device validation and UC addition, both in the local and global domains, is an essential requirement. For this reason, ECCAuth: a novel elliptic curve cryptography-based authentication protocol is proposed in this paper for preserving demand response in SG. This protocol allows establishment of a secret session key between an SG device and a UC after mutual authentication. Using this key, they can securely communicate for exchanging the sensitive information. The formal security analysis, informal security analysis, and formal security verification show that ECCAuth can withstand several known attacks

Abstract

With recent advancements in the field of wearable devices based on Internet of Things (IoT), the concept of flexible and stretchable electronic systems has become increasingly significant. Although decades of dimensional scaling have led to the miniaturization of the traditional complementary metal oxide semiconductor-(CMOS-) based electronic components, they still remain mechanically rigid and brittle. These rigid devices can be mounted on flexible PCB substrates to obtain a certain degree of flexibility; however, this technique cannot lead to truly body conformal electronic systems. Thus, research teams around the world have been looking at various ways of obtaining completely flexible electronic components at the device level itself. These efforts include various processes to thin down silicon chips to make them flexible or development and use of flexible and stretchable substrate materials to fabricate electronic devices. The thinning down process for traditional silicon-based electronic chips can be performed before or after the complete transistor fabrication process [1]. These approaches are referred to as “device first” approach or “device last” approach. In case of the device last approach, thin films of single crystal silicon are transfer printed to a flexible substrate and processed further to fabricate CMOS circuitry [2, 3]. However, in this approach, many high-temperature steps have to be avoided due to the limited thermal stability of the flexible substrate, leading to a suboptimal circuit. In case of the device first approach, the circuits are made on the silicon substrate using state-of-the-art CMOS processes as usual. After completion of the …

Abstract

A capacitive pressure sensor consists of a movable diaphragm which causes change in capacitance for an applied pressure. In order to achieve high sensitivity, a thin diaphragm of large area is employed with a small separation gap. This introduces non-linearity, decreases the dynamic range and increases the size of the sensor. Thus, an optimum sensor design is necessary to balance these trade-offs. This paper presents theoretical modeling and numerical simulations on various performance parameters like diaphragm deflection, change in capacitance, mechanical and capacitive sensitivities and nonlinearity of a clamped and normal mode elliptical capacitive pressure sensor for 0 – 8 kPa operating pressure range. This analysis can form the basis for compact modelling (CM) of circular and elliptical capacitive pressure sensors for simulation with large scale circuits. In all the designs of elliptical and circular …

Abstract

With the ever increasing adoption rate of Internet-enabled devices [also known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices] in applications such as smart home, smart city, smart grid, and healthcare applications, we need to ensure the security and privacy of data and communications among these IoT devices and the underlying infrastructure. For example, an adversary can easily tamper with the information transmitted over a public channel, in the sense of modification, deletion, and fabrication of data-in-transit and data-in-storage. Time-critical IoT applications such as healthcare may demand the capability to support external parties (users) to securely access IoT data and services in real-time. This necessitates the design of a secure user authentication mechanism, which should also allow the user to achieve security and functionality features such as anonymity and un-traceability. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight anonymous user authenticated session key agreement scheme in the IoT environment. The proposed scheme uses three-factor authentication, namely a user's smart card, password, and personal biometric information. The proposed scheme does not require the storing of user specific information at the gateway node. We then demonstrate the proposed scheme's security using the broadly accepted real-or-random (ROR) model, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPAs) software simulation tool, as well as presenting an informal security analysis to demonstrate its other features. In addition, through our simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms existing related user authentication schemes, in terms of its security and functionality features, and computation costs.

Abstract

A dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) is a capacitor with an elastomer as dielectric, sandwiched between two complaint electrodes. An electric potential difference applied across the electrodes results in an electric field that creates lateral motion in the device which can be used to perform mechanical work. However, both the dielectric as well as the electrodes needs to be mechanically compliant. In order to achieve high stretchability, carbon nanotube (CNT) based thin films are used as electrodes to maintain conductance even at large mechanical strains. These electrodes are typically fabricated using spray coating or filter transfer method and resemble a perforated electrode under high magnification. Hence, there can be loss of field and stray capacitance when multiple layers of carbon nanotube based electrodes are used. This paper presents theoretical modelling and finite element analysis (FEA) simulations to …

Abstract

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an intelligent application of Internet of Things (IoT) in smart transportation that takes intelligent commitments to the passengers to improve traffic safety and efficiency, and generate a more enjoyable driving and riding environment. Fog cloud-based IoV is another variant of mobile cloud computing where vehicular cloud and Internet can co-operate in more effective way in IoV. However, more increasing dependence on wireless communication, control, and computing technology makes IoV more dangerous to prospective attacks. For secure communication among vehicles, road-side units, fog and cloud servers, we design a secure authenticated key management protocol in fog computing-based IoV deployment, called AKM-IoV. In the designed AKM-IoV, after mutual authentication between communicating entities in IoV they establish session keys for secure communications. AKM-IoV is tested for its security analysis using the formal security analysis under the widely accepted real-or-random (ROR) model, informal, and formal security verification using the broadly accepted automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPAs) tool. The practical demonstration of AKM-IoV is shown using the NS2 simulation. In addition, a detailed comparative study is conducted to show the efficiency and functionality and security features supported by AKM-IoV as compared to other existing recent protocols.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) comprises physical/virtual networked objects that collect and exchange data with each other via the public Internet. As this exchange often takes place over public networks, many security attacks in an IoT environment are possible. First, we briefly review the security issues in the IoT environment. Next, we focus on recent cryptographic protocol standards that are in use or have been recommended for IoT devices to ensure secure communications. We also highlight the advantages and weaknesses of the several protocol standards for various IoT application scenarios including connected vehicles, health, smart home, and consumer appliances and devices. Finally, we discuss some challenges in the area of cryptographic protocol standards that still require to be addressed for IoT applications in the future.

Abstract

ABSTRACT A method for producing an electronic device involves form ing a graphene precursor on a first portion of a common semiconductor substrate, forming a graphene layer on the graphene precursor, and forming a semiconductor device on a second portion of the common semiconductor substrate

Abstract

Micro-heating capabilities are important in applications such as thermotherapy, drug delivery, gas sensing and so on. Micro-heaters need to be designed such that they provide uniform temperature across a given surface with minimum metal consumption. In case of Joule heating based micro-heaters, the metal coil design plays an important role in determining its heating characteristics. This paper presents multiple designs of space filling curves that can be used as metal coils in micro-heaters to achieve uniform temperature distribution. We have modelled three types of fractal geometries of different orders - Peano, Hilbert and Moore. In order to compare the performance of these geometries with a typical double spiral heat-pad, we kept a fixed area of 30 mm × 30 mm and input power of 1 W. We have used PDMS (poly-dimethylsiloxane) of thickness 200 μm as a base for the heat-pad and copper is used for the