5Gand Cellular Networks in the Smart Grid

Abstract

Figure 1.1.1 Smart city architecture. key areas of the cities, such as power grids, water and underground systems, oil and gas pipelines, railways, roads, schools, hospitals, stations, airports, and so on. The application areas of the smart city are diverse, and they connect every corner of the city to the Internet. This provides global intelligence over the management, and it paves the road for "Internet + Internet of things = smart planet" (Zhang et al., 2010). The smart city is the application of the concept of the smart planet to a specific region. The surveillance of infrastructure and environments of the city with the help of sensor technology achieves intelligent urban management and services (Su et al., 2010). The features of the smart city provide development of efficient urban strategies such as construction of smart homes, wireless cities, and smart transportation systems (Su et al., 2010). The use of IoT to realize the smart city vision brings important challenges. With IoT technology, it is estimated that the number of devices connected to Internet will reach to 16 billion in 2020 (EU, 2010). Due to this increase, wireless data traffic that is being fulfilled in cities will reach excessive levels, and the available spectrum will become scarcer. Ever-growing demand in wireless communications has also increased the spectrum scarcity problem. Furthermore, fixed allocation of the spectrum worsens the problem of inefficient spectrum use. While the licensed spectrum bands are underutilized, the unlicensed ones are crowded, and the wireless communication is no longer feasible in these bands. To overcome the spectrum inefficiency and scarcity problems, CR technology is proposed (Mitola and Maguire, 1999). CR-capable wireless devices can access the licensed spectrum bands opportunistically and hence increase the spectrum utilization efficiency (Haykin, 2008). On the other hand, wireless nodes in these systems are resource constrained. Even though the majority of sensor nodes have duty cycling, a conventional battery in a sensor node depletes in less than a year. Therefore, an auxiliary or even a completely distinct source, such as heat, light, motion, and electromagnetic (EM) waves must be exploited to ensure sensors' operation. In this regard, EH technologies come into prominence to build wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that are free from battery constraints (Sudevayalam and Kulkarni, 2011). Hence, these challenges promote

Evaluation of Communication Infrastructures for Distributed Optimization of Virtual Power Plant Schedules

“…Thus, a communication infrastructure that provides connectivity between agents is needed. Currently, there is no universal communication infrastructure solution for DGs in distribution grids [20][21][22]. However, it is assumed that DGs may be connected to the Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) or Access Network by Smart Meter Gateways (SMGWs), enabling access to the backhaul network by a secure and reliable communication connectivity for future grid-stabilizing or marked-based use cases for DG operation.…”