Static characterized hybrid wireless mesh protocol for Smart Grid neighbourhood area networks

Abstract

Smart Grid neighbourhood area networks (NANs), involving wide coverage and huge number of devices, are required to provide reliable communications for supporting various applications. The IEEE 802.11s standard based wireless mesh network associated with hybrid wireless mesh protocol (HWMP) is highly recommended due to its extended functionality. However, the HWMP based mesh networks can not guarantee quality of service (QoS) for each user which is a critical issue in Smart Grid communications. In this paper, we show the impact of the intermittent route unavailable problem and propose a static characterized HWMP which aims to mitigate the problem by taking advantage of the static characteristic of Smart Grid networks. The proposed scheme combines two methods, an extended routing table and a historical path selection algorithm. A simulation study was carried out using the ns-3 simulator to show the problem of the HWMP based Smart Grid NANs and demonstrate the advantage of the proposed scheme.