Smart grid is a utility network, with advanced information and communications technologies for improved control, efficiency, reliability and safety in electric power distribution and management. Smart grid communication network consists of three interconnected communication networks: home area network (HAN), neighborhood area network (NAN), and wide area network (WAN). Our thesis is focused on NAN. The information flow in smart grid communication networks has different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements in terms of packet loss rate, throughput, and latency. By deploying QoS mechanisms, we can get the real time feedbacks which can be used to supply electricity based on need, thus reducing the wastage of electricity. First, we conducted Opnet simulations for NAN. We evaluated two technologies, Zigbee and wireless local area network (WLAN), for NAN. The simulation results demonstrate that latency can be reduced for the data flow with a higher priority with an appropriate QoS mechanism. Next, we proposed an optimal resource allocation scheme to reduce delay and provide differentiated services, in terms of latency, to different classes of traffic in the NAN. The problem is formulated into a linear programming (LP) problem, which can be solved efficiently. The simulation results and comparison demonstrates that the proposed resource allocation scheme can provide overall lower latency of the various data flows. Our method also lowers the delay of the data flow with a higher priority.
Effective capacity analysis of smart grid communication networks
