Cybersecurity is one of the major issues to be considered while designing a communication network for Smart Grid (SGCN). However, due to the openness and unpredictable nature of the wireless network, it is often prone to different adversarial attacks that exploit vulnerabilities to launch cross-layer attacks during data transmission. To address this issue, we proposed a novel trust-based routing framework with Bayesian Inference to calculate direct trust and Dempster-Shafer (D-S) theory is used to compute the indirect trust by combining the evidence collected from reliable neighbours. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) calculates the node's creditability trust by taking cross-layer metrics like transmission rate, buffering capacity and received signal strength. Further, the fuzzy theory is combined with BDS-AHP to incorporate fairness in utilizing cross-layer metrics for calculating the link trust to enable reliable routing. Extensive experiments are carried to evaluate the performance of the proposed fuzzy-based trusted routing algorithm (FBDS-AHP) with the presence of malicious nodes launching packet-dropping, bad-mouthing, on-off and Sybil attacks. Simulation result proves that the proposed trust evaluation algorithm achieves promising results in defending against these attacks thereby providing improved reliability and ensures secured routing in SGCN.

Finding an optimal route for reliable data delivery in the smart grid communication network (SGCN) is a challenging task due to its dynamic nature. Even though the rule set (RS) and membership function (MF) framed intuitively in our previous fuzzy logic (FL) approach performs the trusted routing satisfactorily, it consumes computational memory and reduces the energy efficiency of the node. To address this issue, in this article, we proposed a novel trust evaluation framework that employs water cycle algorithm (WCA) for automatic tuning of the rule set and membership function for the decision variable to route the packet in an adaptable manner. Variables like distance, link stability, and node honesty are considered for evaluation using WCA in three iterative processes, namely, exploitation, evaporation, and raining to find the near optimal if-then rules and points for the membership functions. An experimental setup is created using Network Simulator-2 (NS2) to evaluate the performance of the proposed trusted routing algorithm in SGCN. Extensive experiments are conducted for three cases, namely, 1) evaluating RS with fixed MF; 2) evaluating MF with fixed RS; and 3) combined evaluation of MF and RS to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. From the simulation results, it is clear that the RS and MF generated by the proposed model is small and compact enough to provide reliable routing in SGCN.