312 research outputs found
What Can Wireless Cellular Technologies Do about the Upcoming Smart Metering Traffic?
The introduction of smart electricity meters with cellular radio interface
puts an additional load on the wireless cellular networks. Currently, these
meters are designed for low duty cycle billing and occasional system check,
which generates a low-rate sporadic traffic. As the number of distributed
energy resources increases, the household power will become more variable and
thus unpredictable from the viewpoint of the Distribution System Operator
(DSO). It is therefore expected, in the near future, to have an increased
number of Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) devices with Phasor Measurement
Unit (PMU)-like capabilities in the distribution grid, thus allowing the
utilities to monitor the low voltage grid quality while providing information
required for tighter grid control. From a communication standpoint, the traffic
profile will change drastically towards higher data volumes and higher rates
per device. In this paper, we characterize the current traffic generated by
smart electricity meters and supplement it with the potential traffic
requirements brought by introducing enhanced Smart Meters, i.e., meters with
PMU-like capabilities. Our study shows how GSM/GPRS and LTE cellular system
performance behaves with the current and next generation smart meters traffic,
where it is clearly seen that the PMU data will seriously challenge these
wireless systems. We conclude by highlighting the possible solutions for
upgrading the cellular standards, in order to cope with the upcoming smart
metering traffic.Comment: Submitted; change: corrected location of eSM box in Fig. 1; May 22,
2015: Major revision after review; v4: revised, accepted for publicatio
LTE network slicing and resource trading schemes for machine-to-machine communications
The Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned as the future of human-free communications. IoT relies on Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications rather than conventional Human-to-Human (H2H) communications. It is expected that billions of Machine Type Communication Devices (MTCDs) will be connected to the Internet in the near future. Consequently, the mobile data traffic is poised to increase dramatically. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and its subsequent technology LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) are the candidate carriers of M2M communications for the IoT purposes. Despite the significant increase of traffic due to IoT, the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) revenues are not increasing at the same pace. Hence, many MNOs have resorted to sharing their radio resources and parts of their infrastructures, in what is known as Network Virtualization (NV). In the thesis, we focus on slicing in which an operator known as Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), does not own a spectrum license or mobile infrastructure, and relies on a larger MNO to serve its users. The large licensed MNO divides its spectrum pool into slices. Each MVNO reserves one or more slice(s). There are 2 forms of slice scheduling: Resource-based in which the slices are assigned a portion of radio resources or Data rate-based in which the slices are assigned a certain bandwidth. In the first part of this thesis we present different approaches for adapting resource-based NV, Data rate-based NV to Machine Type Communication (MTC). This will be done in such a way that resources are allocated to each slice depending on the delay budget of the MTCDs deployed in the slice and their payloads. The adapted NV schemes are then simulated and compared to the Static Reservation (SR) of radio resources. They have all shown an improved performance over SR from deadline missing perspective. In the second part of the thesis, we introduce a novel resource trading scheme that allows sharing operators to trade their radio resources based on the varying needs of their clients with time. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to optimize the resource trading among the virtual operators. The proposed trading scheme is simulated and compared to the adapted schemes from the first part of the thesis. The novel trading scheme has shown to achieve significantly better performance compared to the adapted schemes
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
Separation Framework: An Enabler for Cooperative and D2D Communication for Future 5G Networks
Soaring capacity and coverage demands dictate that future cellular networks
need to soon migrate towards ultra-dense networks. However, network
densification comes with a host of challenges that include compromised energy
efficiency, complex interference management, cumbersome mobility management,
burdensome signaling overheads and higher backhaul costs. Interestingly, most
of the problems, that beleaguer network densification, stem from legacy
networks' one common feature i.e., tight coupling between the control and data
planes regardless of their degree of heterogeneity and cell density.
Consequently, in wake of 5G, control and data planes separation architecture
(SARC) has recently been conceived as a promising paradigm that has potential
to address most of aforementioned challenges. In this article, we review
various proposals that have been presented in literature so far to enable SARC.
More specifically, we analyze how and to what degree various SARC proposals
address the four main challenges in network densification namely: energy
efficiency, system level capacity maximization, interference management and
mobility management. We then focus on two salient features of future cellular
networks that have not yet been adapted in legacy networks at wide scale and
thus remain a hallmark of 5G, i.e., coordinated multipoint (CoMP), and
device-to-device (D2D) communications. After providing necessary background on
CoMP and D2D, we analyze how SARC can particularly act as a major enabler for
CoMP and D2D in context of 5G. This article thus serves as both a tutorial as
well as an up to date survey on SARC, CoMP and D2D. Most importantly, the
article provides an extensive outlook of challenges and opportunities that lie
at the crossroads of these three mutually entangled emerging technologies.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 201
Smart Grid Communications: Overview of Research Challenges, Solutions, and Standardization Activities
Optimization of energy consumption in future intelligent energy networks (or
Smart Grids) will be based on grid-integrated near-real-time communications
between various grid elements in generation, transmission, distribution and
loads. This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of
communications research in the areas of smart grid and smart metering. In
particular, we focus on some of the key communications challenges for realizing
interoperable and future-proof smart grid/metering networks, smart grid
security and privacy, and how some of the existing networking technologies can
be applied to energy management. Finally, we also discuss the coordinated
standardization efforts in Europe to harmonize communications standards and
protocols.Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial
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