Research on the fusion method of WAPI protocol and RIS phased array for wide coverage and high security power communication

For power grid applications, conventional WiFi-based wireless communication has great disadvantages in reliability, coverage-unreliability in large or obstructed spaces, and susceptibility to man-in-the-middle attacks, as well as its unsecure authentication methods to open the way for unwanted access by others. These are the reasons why WiFi fails to meet the demanding requirements set by modern power grid communication systems, namely, that they should focus on high connectivity, cover a wide area, and attain high security levels. They introduced various security methods, but WPA3(WiFi Protected Access 3) still has not eliminated the possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks, or indeed much wider areas, nor does it intend to. Such limitations denote that much stronger solutions must evolve to meet the changing requirements of power grid communications. This paper presents a new hybrid wireless communication technique that integrates WAPI (Wireless LAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure) and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) to resolve power grid communication system challenges. The approach synergistically integrates the secure authentication and encryption of WAPI and the adaptive tuning of signal propagation with RIS for better coverage and quality. The experimental testbed installed at the Yunnan Grid Earthquake Emergency Base (2000 m²) compared the performance of a conventional WiFi with the proposed hybrid WAPI + RIS network. The results reveal that the WAPI + RIS system realizes a 16% better coverage, a 65% higher throughput, a 46% lower latency, and a 75% lower packet loss, and a 100% security block rate, which bettered the performance of a 61% security block rate for WiFi.