THOR: A framework to build an advanced metering infrastructure resilient to DAP failures in smart grids

Smart Grids represent an evolution of the currently deployed power transmission and distribution systems. It implements a bidirectional data and energy flow infrastructure, which enables new important applications, such as distributed generation, remote metering and demand response. These applications require that a control center collects data from and sends commands to smart meters on the consumer premises. The communication between the control center and smart meters is performed through a gateway, called Data Aggregation Point (DAP). The interconnection of smart meters and DAPS results in an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), which is a key component of Smart Grids. Because a DAP is a potential single point of failure, the AMI must be implemented in such a way that each smart meter can reach the control center through multiple DAPS. In this work, we propose THOR, a framework that takes advantage of DAP redundancy to improve AMI reliability in case of DAP failures. In addition, we also propose the MuItiDAP Selection Algorithm (MDSA) as an efficient implementation of THOR. Simulations results show that MDSA is able to guarantee the delivery of nearly 100% of all sent messages, without imposing significant message delay penalties. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.