TV White Spaces in Smart Grids: Case Study in La Guajira

The objective of this work is to evaluate a radio link under the criteria of unavailability and fidelity using TV white spaces (TVWS) to send information from the smart meters located in the township of Puerto Estrella, municipality of Uribia in La Guajira, to the power plant located in the hamlet of Nazareth, within the same municipality, separated by approx-imately 19 km, which is operated by the Institute for Planning and Promotion of Energy Solutions for Non-Interconnected Areas (IPSE). The aforementioned company requested this type of study to consider the possibility of establishing its interconnection solutions using this technology in that region. For this purpose, a characterization of the area was made with the corresponding cartographic information in conjunction with the specialized platform of reference in geographic information systems ArcGIS, and the respective radio link was simulated with the Xirio Professional platform. The simulation results obtained for the RuralConnect Generation TVWS Radio G3 white space device, under different configurations such as transmission power, propagation model, frequency, modulation scheme, among others, show an unavailability of 0.00335 and 0.00003, and a fidelity of 0.0279 and 0.0002 for the worst and best case, respectively. For the Adaptrum ACRS2.0 device, with the same configurations, an unavailability of 0.00176 and 0.00002, and a fidelity of 0.0147 and 0.0001 are obtained for the worst and best case, respectively. This allows compliance with the minimum objectives established in the ITU-R F.1703 and ITU-R F.1668-1 standards.