LTE-D2D Assisted Communication in Smart Grid Neighborhood Area Networks

Abstract

Deployment of charging stations for electric vehicles and phasor measurement units for wide area monitoring have put stringent requirements in terms of real-time data handling capacity and latency on the communication infrastructure in smart grids. Next-generation cellular standards and Device-to-Device (D2D) communication technology offer promising solutions to address these challenges. This paper proposes a hierarchical communication infrastructure utilizing LTE and LTE-D2D modes for information exchange in smart grid Neighborhood Area Network (NAN). Direct link between smart meter and NAN gateway is replaced by two-hop relay communication through local data aggregators. A set of smart meters form a cluster and transmit their status reports periodically to their local aggregator in LTE-D2D assisted mode. Each local aggregator then forwards cumulative reports to regional data aggregator via LTE mode. The proposed framework reduces bandwidth requirement and total uploading time for networks involving high density of devices and producing a large volume of data. Performance of the proposed architecture is compared with WLAN assisted and LTE-Direct transmission modes for NAN communication.