Software Defined Networks-Based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

Abstract

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. By separating the control plane from the data plane, SDN helps the network operators to manage the network flexibly. Since SG heavily relies on communication networks, therefore, SDN has also paved its way into the SG. By applying SDN in SG systems, efficiency and resiliency can potentially be improved. SDN, with its programmability, protocol independence, and granularity features, can help the SG to integrate different SG standards and protocols, to cope with diverse communication systems, and to help SG to perform traffic flow orchestration and to meet specific SG quality of service requirements. 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. Index Terms-Software defined network (SDN), smart grid (SG), advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), renewable energy resources (RERs), home area networks (HANs), network management.

Energy and Information Management of Electric Vehicular Network: A Survey

“…• SG Operation: As more renewable energy and EVs are integrated to the SG, the power profile of the SG fluctuates spatially and temporally. To enable energy balance at all-time in the SG, the grid operator demands automatic and intelligent management schemes [14]; • Communication: Considering the diversity in the SG IoT devices, conventional communication methods cannot guarantee a flexible data transfer among devices [48]. For example, when a new service is added in the SG, every router needs to be reconfigured, which results in high manual cost and service disruption.…”

“…• SDN-based EVN Operation: While SDN presents to be a flexible, effective, and cost-efficient control method for the EVN, it still has many open issues that need further investigation. First, the centralized control manner not only makes SDN vulnerable to the single point of failure [48], but also reduces the EVN resilience. One solution to this issue is through decentralized SDN operation, in which case, communication overhead, census, and synchronization problems need to be addressed.…”

“…), the implementation of SDN is a fundamental problem. While there have been test-beds developed for SDN and SG, respectively [48], a test-bed integrating both SDN and EVN requires further study.…”

Modeling and Analysis of Energy Harvesting and Smart Grid-Powered Wireless Communication Networks: A Contemporary Survey

“…By taking the new angle of the interoperability of wireless communication networks and smart grids (as compared to the existing surveys [3], [21]- [29]), we organize the rest of this article in the following way. Different types of RES and their popular mathematical models are colated in Section II, which are salient for design optimization of different types of RES-powered wireless links and networks in Sections III to VI.…”

Image Transmission over Cognitive Radio Networks for Smart Grid Applications

“…These two flows are not only independent but also have mutual functional effects [5]. Smart grids utilize modern communication networks [6][7][8][9], cyber security measures [4], computational intelligence and efficient information systems throughout the energy production supply chain including distributed generation (DG) resources [10], transmission lines, substations, distribution lines, and end-users as an integrated complex system [11,12]. This description covers a full range of energy systems from the production point to the endpoints at the customer section.…”