Abstract
The smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers and uses bidirectional communication to exchange real-time information between supply system and smart meters at the user end. With a combined communication infrastructure, smart grid manages the operation of all associated components to provide reliable and supportable electricity supply. The Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) of smart grid supports bi-directional data transfer between smart meters (installed at customer premises) and control center of the utility company through an aggregator. This communication suffers low throughput and excessive delays due to the Head of Line (HOL) blocking when the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is implemented for reliability. In this paper we propose SCTP-aware Link Layer Retransmission mechanism (SCTP-LLR) which augments the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) with Link Layer Retransmissions at the aggregator. SCTP-LLR uses the multi-streaming feature offered by SCTP and implements link layer retransmissions at the aggregator to mitigate the effect of HOL blocking. We carried out simulations using Network Simulator and compared the performance of SCTP-LLR against TCP and SCTP. Our results show that SCTP-LLR outperforms both TCP and SCTP in terms of throughput and packet delays and is a promising protocol to be implemented in smart grid NAN for reliable and efficient communication.
Highlights
Smart grid communication is the key concept of integrated information technology in modern power control system
IEEE 802.11ah standard is implemented for wireless connections and LLR mechanism is implemented through the addition of a module at the aggregator which caches packets and retransmits in case of packet loss
We increase the number of smart meters connected to the Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) and observe throughput and delay when Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), TCP-LLR, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) and SCTP-LLR are implemented
Summary
Smart grid communication is the key concept of integrated information technology in modern power control system. The connection-oriented service is provided by Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which provides reliability in addition to congestion control and flow control. An important challenge which limits the performance of transport protocols in NAN of smart grid communication network is Head of Line (HOL) blocking which occurs due to the large number of consumers connected to the grid. In order to cope with the HOL blocking in NAN of smart grid communication network, we suggest augmenting the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) with Link Layer Retransmissions (SCTP-LLR). In our proposed SCTPLLR mechanism, we use the multi-streaming feature at the end systems (smart meters and control center) and implement link layer retransmissions at the aggregator which connects wirelessly with the smart meters.
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