Smart grid cooperative communication with smart relay

Abstract

Many studies have investigated the smart grid architecture and communication models in the past few years. However, the communication model and architecture for a smart grid still remain unclear. Today's electric power distribution is very complex and maladapted because of the lack of efficient and cost-effective energy generation, distribution, and consumption management systems. A wireless smart grid communication system can playan important role in achieving these goals. In thispaper, we describe a smart grid communication architecture in which we merge customers and distributors into a single domain. In the proposed architecture, all the home area networks, neighborhood area networks, and local electrical equipment form a local wireless mesh network (LWMN). Each device or meter can act as a source, router, or relay. The data generated in any node (device/meter) reaches the data collector via other nodes. The data collector transmits this data via the access point of a wide area network (WAN). Finally, data is transferred to the service provider or to the control center of the smart grid. We propose a wireless cooperative communication model for the LWMN. We deploy a limited number of smart relays to improve the performance of the network. A novel relay selection mechanism is also proposed to reduce the relay selection overhead. Simulation results show that our cooperative smart grid (coopSG) communication model improves the end-to-end packet delivery latency, throughput, and energy efficiency over both the Wang et al. and Niyato et al. models.