Priority Inversion Prevention Scheme for PLC Vehicle-to-Grid Communications Under the Hidden Station Problem

Abstract

Power line communication (PLC) has been selected by ISO/IEC 15118 as standard technology for vehicle-to-grid communication. Communication traffic to charge an electric vehicle should have a higher priority than normal traffic in order to improve the reliability and delay performance. To this end, HomePlug Green PHY, which is a standard PLC defined in ISO/IEC 15118, provides such a priority resolution scheme. However, when there is a hidden station with respect to the high-priority station, the priority resolution scheme does not operate properly, resulting in a higher delay or losses of high-priority traffic. This paper briefly analyzes the priority inversion probability under the hidden station problem and proposes a priority inversion prevention scheme. The adverse effect of the priority inversion problem is demonstrated through a numerical analysis and extensive simulations. We also show that our proposed scheme not only solves the problem but also improves the performance of the other stations.