6 research outputs found
Efficient Cooperative Anycasting for AMI Mesh Networks
We have, in recent years, witnessed an increased interest towards enabling a
Smart Grid which will be a corner stone to build sustainable energy efficient
communities. An integral part of the future Smart Grid will be the
communications infrastructure which will make real time control of the grid
components possible. Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is thought to be a
key enabler for monitoring and controlling the customer loads. %RPL is a
connectivity enabling mechanism for low power and lossy networks currently
being standardized by the IETF ROLL working group. RPL is deemed to be a
suitable candidate for AMI networks where the meters are connected to a
concentrator over multi hop low power and lossy links. This paper proposes an
efficient cooperative anycasting approach for wireless mesh networks with the
aim of achieving reduced traffic and increased utilisation of the network
resources. The proposed cooperative anycasting has been realised as an
enhancement on top of the Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks
(RPL), a connectivity enabling mechanism in wireless AMI mesh networks. In this
protocol, smart meter nodes utilise an anycasting approach to facilitate
efficient transport of metering data to the concentrator node. Moreover, it
takes advantage of a distributed approach ensuring scalability
Isolating SDN Control Traffic with Layer-2 Slicing in 6TiSCH Industrial IoT Networks
Recent standardization efforts in IEEE 802.15.4-2015 Time Scheduled Channel
Hopping (TSCH) and the IETF 6TiSCH Working Group (WG), aim to provide
deterministic communications and efficient allocation of resources across
constrained Internet of Things (IoT) networks, particularly in Industrial IoT
(IIoT) scenarios. Within 6TiSCH, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been
identified as means of providing centralized control in a number of key
situations. However, implementing a centralized SDN architecture in a Low Power
and Lossy Network (LLN) faces considerable challenges: not only is controller
traffic subject to jitter due to unreliable links and network contention, but
the overhead generated by SDN can severely affect the performance of other
traffic. This paper proposes using 6TiSCH tracks, a Layer-2 slicing mechanism
for creating dedicated forwarding paths across TSCH networks, in order to
isolate the SDN control overhead. Not only does this prevent control traffic
from affecting the performance of other data flows, but the properties of
6TiSCH tracks allows deterministic, low-latency SDN controller communication.
Using our own lightweight SDN implementation for Contiki OS, we firstly
demonstrate the effect of SDN control traffic on application data flows across
a 6TiSCH network. We then show that by slicing the network through the
allocation of dedicated resources along a SDN control path, tracks provide an
effective means of mitigating the cost of SDN control overhead in IEEE
802.15.4-2015 TSCH networks
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
Cooperative relaying in wireless networks
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