Survey on Wi-Fi and Cellular Communication Technology for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in a Developing Economy

Traditional energy meters have suffered from a lack of automated analysis and inaccuracy in reading energy consumption, which has brought about smart metering systems. Developing economies such as in Africa. still experience a setback in electricity monitoring and load distribution because of existing traditional meter systems in use. Communication technologies play an important role to improve the monitoring of energy consumption and ensure a road map toward a smart grid. This paper reviews communication technologies used for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) emphasizing Wi-Fi and Cellular technologies. Metrics used to evaluate their performance include cost, energy efficiency, coverage, deployment, latency, payload, and scalability. The review presents a benchmark for research on AMI communication technologies in developing economies. When adopted, the expected AMI benefits are reduced energy theft, cost efficiency, real-time analysis, security, and safety of energy supply in developing economies

Smart Grid Systems in Nigeria: Prospects, Issues, Challenges and Way Forward

The ability of the power system to deliver to its consumer electrical energy at an expected level of reliability is correlated with the economic development of a country. The Nigerian power system faces many challenges, varying from overdue infrastructure maintenance, obsolete tools and appliances, insufficient electricity supply, corruption, etc. A gradual shift from manual to smart digital technologies include; smart metering, distributed generation (renewable energy and microgrid), and management using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools. In response, research, investments, and upgrade to the power sector are fundamental. This paper discusses and analyses the various smart grid technologies utilised in the Nigerian power system with their effects, impacts, deployment, and integration into the traditional Nigerian power grid. Also discussed are issues and challenges of smart grid deployment and ways of mitigating these challenges

Heterogeneous LoRaWan Deployment for Application Dependent IOT Networks

In this study, we present an application-dependent heterogeneous LoRa network. Previous studies on LoRaWAN and particularly studies that rely on the use of adaptive data rate to optimize the performance of the network are based purely on the path loss of the nodes in the network with the assumption that all nodes in the network have similar requirements in terms of data rate and latency. In a real-life full-scale deployment, this is unlikely to be the case as the current LoRaWAN deployment trend shows that practical implementations are service-based. This approach means that critical applications will suffer reliability issues since they will have to compete with non-critical services for the same resources. To address this problem, we propose a heterogeneous LoRaWAN that is capable of providing support for applications ranging from delay-tolerant to delay intolerant with improved reliability through preferential transmission parameter allocation. Our study shows that this approach can increase the probability of successful uplink transmission of the critical applications by up to 44 percent and for transmitting nodes within a 3 km radius of the gateway, heterogeneous LoRaWAN possesses a 20 percent higher uplink packet delivery rate in comparison with the homogeneous network at the cost of slightly higher energy consumption

Temperature Variation Effect on a Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antenna

A novel hypothesis is proposed for the radiation pattern of a Rec-tangular Microstrip Patch Antenna sensitive to temperature variations from the ideal room temperature tolerance under which it was manufactured. In order to validate this hypothetical model, equations relating the resonating frequency, patch length and dielectric constant of the antenna to variations from the room temperature were improved. Simulations were carried out to validate the hypoth-esis in the drifts in ambient temperature effects on dimensions of the patch an-tenna and its field radiation patterns; including its directivity, power pattern, max-imum radiation in the electric-field plane