Mitigating link insecurities in smart grids via QoS multi-constraint routing

We consider the problem of enhancing communication security while maintaining quality of service (QoS) through the communication networks of smart grid systems. Specifically, this work employs software defined networks (SDN) framework to mitigate insecure communication links while maintaining satisfactory QoS essential to control functionality of the smart grid. An SDN is able to maintain an overall network awareness, through which a controller is capable of optimizing routing based on metrics of interest. The routing problem is formulated as a double constraint shortest path problem where dynamic delay is the QoS metric with an additional constraint of link vulnerability. The proposed framework is shown, in different test cases, to be able to maintain QoS while mitigating link insecurities.