Energy-efficient smart grid communications

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are playing an important role in the modernization of the power grid. Communication networks for the smart grid should be energy-efficient (EE), so that these extra associated networks themselves will not significantly increase energy consumption of the total grid. More importantly, communication devices should not have to be recharged frequently and ideally would keep working even during extreme situations such as blackouts. A significant amount of research efforts have been put into reducing energy consumption of networks powered by the smart grid. However, the impact of green ICTs on the smart grid communications and applications remains to be explored. In this chapter, we surveyed EE smart grid communication networks, which are divided into three domains: smart grid home area networks (SG-HANs), smart grid neighborhood area networks (SG-NANs), and smart grid wide area networks (SG-WANs). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey of EE smart communications networks. Due to the importance of SG-NANs, this chapter focuses on SG-NANs, where data aggregation units (DAUs) communicate with home gateways (HGWs). Moreover, a multicell orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) cellular network is proposed for an SG-NAN. In order to improve energy-efficiency of the SG-NAN, a distributed resource allocation scheme is proposed, which also takes HGW fairness and priority into consideration. Average data rates are considered, since they are more appropriate from the HGWs' perspective. The EE resource allocation with fairness optimization problem is transformed from a fractional to equivalent subtractive form, which is subsequently modeled as a non-cooperative game. Interference pricing functions are used to drive the Nash equilibrium (NE) to Pareto optimal. An EE resource allocation iterative algorithm is designed for the resource allocation optimization problem. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme on energy-efficiency and HGW fairness.