A Novel Scheme for Improving the Reliability in Smart Grid Neighborhood Area Networks

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 129942 - 129954
• Main Authors: Hsieh, Sun-Yuan, Lai, Chun-Chia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Communications systems; Energy consumption; Finite element method; IEEE 80211s; Local area networks; Neighborhood area network; Network reliability; reliability; Smart grid; Software reliability; Wireless communications; wireless mesh networks; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2938593

A smart grid, as its name implies, is an intelligent grid, which features two-way transmission for electricity and information. A smart grid can deliver various types of electrical services and streamlined, highly efficient energy consumption, but only if its communication systems are highly reliable. A smart grid can be based on wireless networks, which offer high speed and low cost, but problems with wireless technology can impair communications performance and destabilize the smart grid. Wireless local area network (LAN) mesh networks based on IEEE 802.11s can serve as the backbones of smart grids. IEEE 802.11s provides flexible, scalable, high-speed communications with low installation and management costs. In this paper, we first describe IEEE 802.11s, default routing protocol, Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol (HWMP); Even though HWMP has several shortcomings that destabilize smart grids, we propose a novel scheme to improve smart grid routing reliability. We present a simulation of our proposed scheme using ns-3 simulation software, and prove that our method can improve smart grid reliability.