A Secure Transmission Strategy for Smart Grid Communications Assisted by 5G Base Station

As the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart grids grows, security issues arise, including eavesdropping. The fifth generation (5G) wireless technologies are the driving force behind many IoT applications; hence, it is apparent that the broadcast nature of IoT devices makes data security unprecedentedly important. However, the operation of 5G base stations (BSs) incurs more power consumption cost for telecom operator and occupies the majority of the energy consumption in cellular wireless networks. In view of the above, we aim to increase the secrecy rate of smart grid communication networks by joint collaboration between utility companies and telecom operators, while also boosting mutual profitability in this paper. First, the impacts of secrecy rate on communication reliability in demand-side communication networks are evaluated. Next, we propose a secure transmission approach that leases the power of 5G BS to interfere with the eavesdroppers, improving the secrecy rate, and then construct an interference power allocation and price optimization algorithm based on the Stackelberg game to achieve the best results. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method can greatly enhance communication secrecy rate while also lowering the costs of the utility companies and telecom operator.