Light-Weight Secure CAN-Bus Communication for Supervisory Control of Power Converters-Based Microgrid Applications

The Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus is a commonly used communication protocol for different applications including vehicle controllers and power electronics converters which are the application focus in this paper. One drawback of CAN-bus is the lack of security measures in the protocol, which can be problematic if the communication line is exposed to attackers. This paper proposes a novel method to secure CAN-bus communication that is light-weight and applicable for power converters and microgrid applications. The proposed solution aims to protect against eavesdropping, false data injection, and replay attacks. The security scheme is implemented and deployed on a low-cost microcontroller that is used to control power sharing rectifiers. Experimental results are carried out to show that the proposed method effectively secures the channel against attacks with minimal time and space overhead.