A coordinated post-quantum mesh and route-aware zero-trust framework for smart-grid IoT communication utilizing simulation and attack evaluation

Abstract

Smart-grid IoT networks require post-quantum protection, resilient routing, and continuous trust enforcement without excessive communication overhead. This study proposes a coordinated migration-oriented framework that integrates ML-KEM-1024 key establishment, ML-DSA-87 authentication, authenticated RPL mesh routing, and route-aware zero-trust validation. Its main novelty is the unified binding of post-quantum device identity with route admission, continuous trust scoring, compromised-node isolation, trusted failover, session rekeying, and controlled reintegration. The framework was evaluated using NS-3 simulations, Raspberry Pi cryptographic measurements, adversarial emulation, and ProVerif analysis across five controlled configurations with 75 legitimate nodes, four adversarial nodes, and 30 independently seeded runs. Under nominal traffic, the complete configuration achieved an RTT of 44.7 ± 3.0  ms and a PDR of 99.2 ± 0.4 % . Under high load and primary-router failure, it maintained 99.1 ± 0.6 % PDR and recovered in 11.6 ± 2.1  s. Relative to the post-quantum mesh configuration without continuous zero-trust enforcement, it reduced combined MITM and route-manipulation success by 82.6% and DDoS recovery time by 52.8%, with only a 1.5-percentage-point increase in control overhead. Compared with the reproduced ETX–Trust Secure-RPL baseline, PDR improved by 0.5 percentage points and DDoS recovery was 6.0 s faster, although RTT increased by 3.9 ms. ProVerif symbolically verified session secrecy, mutual authentication, replay resistance, route-admission integrity, failover, and post-rekey security. The framework provides a practical security and migration layer for AMI, DER, and substation communication, while full standards interoperability and utility-scale validation remain future requirements.