{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]],"date-time":"2026-03-31T10:24:57Z","timestamp":1774952697597,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,21]],"date-time":"2023-01-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1674259200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000001","name":"National Science Foundation (NSF)","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["OIA-1757207"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["OIA-1757207"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000001","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000001","name":"National Science Foundation (NSF)","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["CNS-2150145"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["CNS-2150145"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000001","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Smart appliances\u2019 run schedule and electric vehicles charging can be managed over a smart grid enabled home area network (HAN) to reduce electricity demand at critical times and add more plug-in electric vehicles to the grid, which eventually lower customers\u2019 energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Short range radio-based wireless communication technologies commonly adopted in a HAN are vulnerable to cyber attacks due to their wide interception range. In this work, a low-cost solution is proposed for securing the low-volume data exchange of sensitive tasks (e.g., key management and mutual authentication). Our approach utilizes the emerging concept of retro-reflector based visible light communication (Retro-VLC), where smart appliances, IoT sensors and other electric devices perform the sensitive data exchange with the HAN gateway via the secure Retro-VLC channel. To conduct the feasibility study, a multi-pixel Retro-VLC link is prototyped to enable quadrature amplitude modulation. The bit error rate of Retro-VLC is studied analytically, numerically and experimentally. A heterogeneous Retro-VLC + WLAN connection is implemented by socket programming. In addition, the working range, sniffing range, and key exchange latency are measured. The results validate the applicability of the Retro-VLC based solution.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s23031245","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,23]],"date-time":"2023-01-23T01:36:26Z","timestamp":1674437786000},"page":"1245","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Securing Smart Grid Enabled Home Area Networks with Retro-Reflective Visible Light Communication"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Mathew","family":"Salas","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM 87801, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2831-9860","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sihua","family":"Shao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM 87801, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Adrian","family":"Salustri","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM 87801, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zachary","family":"Schroeck","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Montana Technological University, Butte, MT 59701, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6727-5867","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jun","family":"Zheng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science & Engineering, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM 87801, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gellings, P. 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