Application of Doubly Connected Dominating Sets to Safe Rectangular Smart Grids

Abstract

Smart grids, together with the Internet of Things, are considered to be the future of the electric energy world. This is possible through a two-way communication between nodes of the grids and computer processing. It is necessary that the communication is easy and safe, and the distance between a point of demand and supply is short, to reduce the electricity loss. All these requirements should be met at the lowest possible cost. In this paper, we study a two-dimensional rectangular grid graph which is considered to be a model of a smart grid; nodes of the graph represent points and devices of the smart grid, while links represent possible ways of communication and energy transfer. We consider the problem of choosing the lowest possible number of locations (nodes, points) of the grid which could serve as energy sources (or a source of different resources) to other nodes in such a way that we ensure reduction in electricity loss and provide safe communication and resistance to failures and increases in energy demand.Therefore, we study minimum doubly connected dominating sets in grid graphs. We show that the proposed solutions are the best possible in terms of the number of source points for the case of narrow grid graphs and we give upper and lower bounds for the case of wide grid graphs.