SQDAPSM: a secure quantum data aggregation protocol for smart meters

Abstract Vast amounts of information are collected and organized into a more understandable and comprehensive style through data aggregation. User privacy needs to be maintained even though real-time electricity use data is helpful for big data analysis. One of the main issues is finding a balance between data utility and privacy protection. To ensure secure transmission, the individual measurements from each user should be combined before being transferred to the gateways. This work presents a quantum protocol-based security architecture for user data that leverages entanglement based techniques and quantum key distribution to enhance the security and privacy of data aggregation. Safe information transport is made possible via quantum entanglement, which solves the shortcomings of conventional cryptography methods. Using quantum protocols, our method maintains its robustness and efficiency while providing an extra degree of security. We show that neither external nor participant attacks may compromise our protocol.