Robot Delay-Tolerant Sensor Network for Overhead Transmission Line Monitoring

The rapid development of the smart grid has led to higher maintenance cost and greater scalability of transmission lines. An effective and secure monitoring system for power lines has become a bottleneck restricting the intellectualization of power grids. To address this problem, a novel method is proposed for the intelligent monitoring of power grids (Robot Delay-Tolerant Sensor Network, RDTSN) based on an inspection robot, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Delay-Tolerant Sensor Network (DTSN) to achieve low-cost, energy-efficient, elastic and remote monitoring of power grids. With RDTSN, a smart grid can detect the fault of transmission lines and evaluate the operational state of power grids. To build an effective monitoring system for a smart grid, this research focuses on designing a methodology that achieves efficient and secure delivery of the data inspected on transmission lines. Multiple RDTSN scenarios are performed, in which different routing algorithms are explored to determine the optimal parameters, with a balance in network performance and financial cost. Furthermore, a data delivery strategy is introduced to ensure communication security.