An energy efficient network architecture and spectrum sharing technique for cognitive radio based smart grid communications

Abstract

With the introduction of an automated electric power system known as smart grid, issues relating to power quality, shortages and inefficiency have been solved. Two vital foundations necessary for the sustainability and the stability of Smart Grids (SG) are a resourceful and reliable communication between users in a smart grid network and an energy efficient Smart Grid Communication Network (SGCN) architecture. On the other hand, Cognitive radios (CR) are equipped with the capability of exploiting unused licensed spectrum resources for effective spectrum utilization. The objective of this paper is to integrate cognitive radio into smart grid communication network in order to make the network a lot smarter and provide spectrum sharing solutions in SGCN. In this paper, an energy efficient SGCN architecture that is layered into the Home Area Network (HAN), Neighbourhood Area Network (HAN) and the Wide Area Network (WAN) has been proposed. Furthermore, in order to achieve a fair spectrum sharing amongst users in the network, CR users in the HANs estimate the need of its neighbouring users to transmit data. Then it uses this information to predict the vacant channels that will be utilized by any node in the network using a Markov chain process. In the NANs, a model is also proposed where every user sensor node access the spectrum based on the buffer occupancy estimates of its neighboring nodes. Simulation results show that there is a higher throughput in the network and also an increase in the quantity of data packets successfully transmitted using the proposed model.