Elsevier

Ad Hoc Networks

Volume 41, 1 May 2016, Pages 47-56
Ad Hoc Networks

Flexible channel selection mechanism for cognitive radio based last mile smart grid communications

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2015.10.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Smart grid (SG) operation requires a reliable, accurate and effective communication link between the distributed meters and the control center. However, dedicating a portion of the spectrum is difficult due to the spectrum scarcity problem. Cognitive radio (CR) technology has been nominated as a good candidate for SG communications due to its efficiency and flexibility. Indeed, channel selection in CR-based SG systems is still an open issue, and it is investigated in this paper. The paper proposes a novel channel selection mechanism that is able to adapt the selection criteria based on the type of transmitted data. The proposed mechanism is proven to provide high performance compared to the non-adaptable mechanisms.

Section snippets

Cognitive radios for smart grid communication

The communications infrastructure for smart grid (SG) has recently received an increasing attention. Given the heterogeneity of the SG, it is necessary to clarify that the considered scenario in the paper consists of the communication links used to interconnect the distributed meters at the customers’ side and the local control center. To some extent, from a communications perspective, this could be considered the last mile of the SG system. Many wireless technologies have been nominated in the

System model

A typical SG system is considered, as shown in Fig. 1. In general, a SG consists of power plant, power utilities, transmission grid, distribution grid and terminal power consumers. There are two types of flows in the SG system, the power flow and the information flow. One of the important differences between the traditional power grid and the smart grid is that terminal power consumers do not only unilaterally receive the orders from utilities, but they can also report and send their demand

The proposed channel selection mechanisms

In this section, we propose a channel selection mechanism for CR-base SG communications. The proposed mechanism is designed to adapt the selection criteria according to the type of data to transmit. Thus, it should (as will be proved later) provide high performance compared to other channel selection mechanisms.

The proposed channel selection mechanism is described in Fig. 3. The figure describes the whole process of SG communication based on CR technology, starting from spectrum sensing,

Performance analysis and simulation results

In this section, the performance of the proposed channel selection mechanism is explored through simulation results. The results of other three channel selection mechanisms will be shown for comparison purpose. The three mechanisms are as follows:

  • SNR-based channel selection mechanism: It implies that the transmit channel will be selected based on the instantaneous SNR. Specifically, the channel whose SNR is the maximum will be selected from those that have been identified as idle by both the

Conclusions

This paper investigates the channel selection problem of cognitive radio based smart grid communications in the distribution section. SNR-based mechanisms can offer high data rate, while the cost is in longer delays due to not considering the reliability of the transmit channels. On the other hand, reliability-based mechanisms are able to shorten the transmission delay, and the corresponding data rate loss is high. The proposed mechanism is able to achieve balance in this trade-off as it adapts

Saud Althunibat is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communications Engineering of Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan. He received the B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering/Communications in 2004 from Mutah University, Jordan, the M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering/Communications in 2010 from the University of Jordan, Jordan, and the Ph.D. degree in Telecommunications in 2014 from the University of Trento, Italy. From 2011 to 2014, he has been a Marie-Curie Early-stage researcher

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  • Cited by (0)

    Saud Althunibat is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communications Engineering of Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan. He received the B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering/Communications in 2004 from Mutah University, Jordan, the M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering/Communications in 2010 from the University of Jordan, Jordan, and the Ph.D. degree in Telecommunications in 2014 from the University of Trento, Italy. From 2011 to 2014, he has been a Marie-Curie Early-stage researcher working within the GREENET project at University of Trento. He is a reviewer in many international journals and a TPC member in many international conferences. He is the recipient of the best-paper award in IEEE CAMAD 2012, and was selected as exemplary reviewer in IEEE Communication Letters 2013. His research interests include Cognitive Radio Networks, Physical-Layer Security, Resource Allocation and Heterogeneous Networks.

    Qi Wang received his M.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Sungkyunkwan University, S. Korea in 2011,and Ph.D. degree in Information and Communications Technology from University of Trento, Italy in 2015. He was a Visiting Scholar at North Carolina State University from November 2013 to April 2014. His research interests include WiMAX, Wireless Sensor Network, and Wireless Communications in Smart Grid, Architecture Modelling of Smart Grid, Renewable Energy System, and Fast Power Charging Station for Electric Vehicles.

    Fabrizio Granelli is IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer for 2012–2015, and Associate Professor at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) of the University of Trento (Italy). He received the “Laurea” (M.Sc.) degree in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Genoa, Italy, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. In August 2004, August 2010 and April 2013, he was visiting professor at the State University of Campinas (Brasil). He is author or co-author of more than 140 papers with topics related to networking. He was guest-editor of ACM Journal on Mobile Networks and Applications, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, and Hindawi Journal of Computer Systems, Networks and Communications. He was TPC Co-Chair of IEEE GLOBECOM Symposium on “Communications QoS, Reliability and Performance Modeling” in the years 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2012.

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