Quality of Service Improvement in Neighborhood Area Networking for AMI With ZigBee-Based Tunable Clustered Scale-Free Topology and RPL Routing

Abstract

This paper deals with the unique development of tunable clustered scale-free neighbourhood area networking (TSFNAN) using ZigBee for establishment of smart grid communication. The complexity of ZigBee based multihop mesh links between gateway and smart meters (SMs) are reduced by extracting the hop reduction feature of scale free and tunable clustering schemes. Further, the routing protocol for low power and lossy networking (RPL) is also adopted to avoid the requirement of route discovery during data transmission. The different service challenges of neighbourhood area networking (NAN) in advanced metering infrastructure of smart grid can thus be met with improved quality of service. A Markov chain delay model is developed to analyse the latency and packet loss in data transmission. The gateway position and the number of SMs are made scalable by correlating the hop count with the tunable clustering coefficient. The proposed system is simulated for a given area with (i) four clusters each containing 2500 SMs and (ii) one cluster containing 10000 SMs. A prototype model with 20 ZigBee nodes is experimented with different coverage range. The system performance is discussed and compared for all such case studies and an encouraging result suggests its practical feasibility with improved QoS.