A Reliable Hybrid Wireless Network Architecture for Smart Grid Neighbourhood Area Networks

Smart grid neighbourhood area networks (NANs), supporting the communications for the power distribution system, involve high density of devices and massive volume of dates. A valid communication architecture for NANs has to guarantee the required date delivery for smart grid applications. In this paper, we propose a hybrid multi channel wireless network, combining wireless local area network and wireless mesh network, for smart grid NANs. The proposed architecture divides the NANs into two layers with different communication technologies that are connected by data aggregation points. A simulation study was carried out by using the ns-3 simulator, and the results indicate that the proposed network architecture fulfils the requirements of most applications in the smart grid with proper configurations. The simulation also provides quantitative analysis into the tradeoff between the number of data aggregation points and performance of the proposed architecture.