Impact of Communication System Characteristics on Electric Vehicle Grid Integration: A Large-Scale Practical Assessment of the UK’s Cellular Network for the Internet of Energy

Abstract

The ever-increasing number of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) requires appropriate electric vehicle grid integration (EVGI) for charging coordination to maintain grid stability and enhance PEV user convenience. As such, the widespread adoption of electric mobility can be successful. EVGI is facilitated through charging stations and empowers PEV users to manage their charging demand by using smart charging solutions. This makes PEV grids assets that provide flexibility to the power grid. The Internet of Things (IoT) feature can make smooth EVGI possible through a supporting communication infrastructure. In this regard, the selection of an appropriate communication protocol is essential for the successful implementation of EVGI. This study assesses the efficacy of the UK’s 4G network with TCP and 4G UDP protocols for potential EVGI operations. For this, an EVGI emulation test bed is developed, featuring three charging parking lots with the capacity to accommodate up to 64 PEVs. The network’s performance is assessed in terms of data packet loss (e.g., the data-exchange capability between EVGI entities) and latency metrics. The findings reveal that while 4G TCP often outperforms 4G UDP, both achieve latencies of less than 1 s with confidence intervals of 90% or greater for single PEV cases. However, it is observed that the high penetration of PEVs introduces a pronounced latency due to queuing delays in the network including routers and the base station servers, highlighting the challenges associated with maintaining efficient EVGI coordination, which in turn affects the efficient use of grid assets.

Next–Generation Intrusion Detection for IoT EVCS: Integrating CNN, LSTM, and GRU Models

“…OCPP is the communication standard used for communication between EVCS and central management systems. NIDS in EVCS must be equipped to monitor and analyze the traffic that adheres to this protocol, ensuring secure and efficient communication between charging points and network operators [12].…”

“…As aforementioned, one of the primary adaptations involves the handling of proprietary protocols, such as OCPP, which is widely used for communication between EVCS and central management systems. In this context, NIDS must be proficient in monitoring and analyzing traffic adhering to these protocols to effectively detect any anomalies or malicious activities [12]. This proficiency is essential for preempting and mitigating threats that could compromise the communication integrity between EVCS and the central network.…”

“…They apply a series of learnable filters to input sequences, capturing essential features such as the signature of packet headers or the frequency of specific network events. This is particularly crucial in the context of EVCS, where the myriad of devices and communication protocols introduce a complex and dense feature space [12]. The spatially enriched features identified by the CNN layers serve as input to the LSTM and GRU layers.…”