Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Improving reliability in multi-layer networks with Network Coding Protection

© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.A major concern among network providers is to endow their networks with the ability to withstand and recover from failures. In recent years, there is a trend in network research referred to as Network Coding Protection (NCP). NCP combines the use of network coding techniques with a proactive protection scheme with the aim of improving network reliability. Although today's network backbone is a multi-layer network formed by the convergence of IP/MPLS and Optical technologies, the information available in the literature related to the performance of NCP schemes in multi-layer network scenarios is yet scarce. In this paper, we propose a novel NCP scheme referred to as DPNC+. The novelty of DPNC+ is that it exploits cross-layer information in order to improve the reliability of multi-layer (IP/MPLS over Optical) networks against link failures. Our evaluation results show that reduction up to 50% -related to protection cost- can be obtained when using the proposed scheme compared to conventional proactive protection techniques.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy under contract TEC2012-34682, and the Catalan Research Council (CIRIT) under contract 2009 SGR1508.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Deep Space Network information system architecture study

The purpose of this article is to describe an architecture for the Deep Space Network (DSN) information system in the years 2000-2010 and to provide guidelines for its evolution during the 1990s. The study scope is defined to be from the front-end areas at the antennas to the end users (spacecraft teams, principal investigators, archival storage systems, and non-NASA partners). The architectural vision provides guidance for major DSN implementation efforts during the next decade. A strong motivation for the study is an expected dramatic improvement in information-systems technologies, such as the following: computer processing, automation technology (including knowledge-based systems), networking and data transport, software and hardware engineering, and human-interface technology. The proposed Ground Information System has the following major features: unified architecture from the front-end area to the end user; open-systems standards to achieve interoperability; DSN production of level 0 data; delivery of level 0 data from the Deep Space Communications Complex, if desired; dedicated telemetry processors for each receiver; security against unauthorized access and errors; and highly automated monitor and control

Resilient flow decomposition of unicast connections with network coding

In this paper we close the gap between end-to-end diversity coding and intra-session network coding for unicast connections resilient against single link failures. In particular, we show that coding operations are sufficient to perform at the source and receiver if the user data can be split into at most two parts over the filed GF(2). Our proof is purely combinatorial and based on standard graph and network flow techniques. It is a linear time construction that defines the route of subflows A, B and A+B between the source and destination nodes. The proposed resilient flow decomposition method generalizes the 1+1 protection and the end-to-end diversity coding approaches while keeping both of their benefits. It provides a simple yet resource efficient protection method feasible in 2-connected backbone topologies. Since the core switches do not need to be modified, this result can bring benefits to current transport networks.Comment: submitted to IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) 201