A Multi-Vendor Model for Authenticating Electric Vehicles in Smart Grid Systems Using RSA and ECC

Abstract

Electric Vehicles (EV) have shown promising prospects of reducing emission of carbon dioxide and air pollution. There is great demand in the market for these vehicles from the consumer end. However, in order to allow deployment of these vehicles in the streets, the charging infrastructure needs to exist and charging stations need to be set up in an efficient manner. The big challenge will be to develop a secure communication system from the Electric Vehicles (EV) to the Service Provider via the Charging Points. Once the Electric Vehicles are plugged in to the Charging Points, they need to be authorized and authenticated by their charging service provider prior to charging. The authentication of Electric Vehicles within the smart grid system is a hot topic in today's world and is also the core focus of this thesis. In this paper, a multi-vendor model is proposed to provide authorization and authentication service to Electric Vehicles by the Charging Service Providers through Charging Points. EVA Charge Boards specified by the ISO 15118 standard [ISO13] were used to emulate the actions of the Electric Vehicle (EV) and the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE). The multi-vendor model consists of two vendors, Vendor A and B, responsible for the registration, certificate issuing, certificate handling and certificate validation of the Electric Vehicles. Vendor A and B operated using RSA and ECC cryptosystems respectively to perform the cryptographic operations within the authentication processes. The cryptographic operations within both the cryptosystems used in the model were then tested in order to compare their performances between them and also with State of The Art schemes.