A communication infrastructure is an essential part to the success of the emerging smart grid. A scalable and pervasive communication infrastructure is crucial in both construction and operation of a smart grid. In this paper, we present the background and motivation of communication infrastructures in smart grid systems. We also summarize major requirements that smart grid communications must meet. From the experience of several industrial trials on smart grid with communication infrastructures, we expect that the traditional carbon fuel based power plants can cooperate with emerging distributed renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc, to reduce the carbon fuel consumption and consequent green house gas such as carbon dioxide emission. The consumers can minimize their expense on energy by adjusting their intelligent home appliance operations to avoid the peak hours and utilize the renewable energy instead. We further explore the challenges for a communication infrastructure as the part of a complex smart grid system. Since a smart grid system might have over millions of consumers and devices, the demand of its reliability and security is extremely critical. Through a communication infrastructure, a smart grid can improve power reliability and quality to eliminate electricity blackout. Security is a challenging issue since the on-going smart grid systems facing increasing vulnerabilities as more and more automation, remote monitoring/controlling and supervision entities are interconnected.

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1315&context=electricalengineeringfacpub

A Survey on Smart Grid CommunicationInfrastructures: Motivations, Requirements andChallenges

Industrial internet of things: Recent advances, enabling technologies and open challenges

Due to the advancements in cellular technologies and the dense deployment of cellular infrastructure, integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks is a promising solution to achieve safe UAV operation as well as enabling diversified applications with mission-specific payload data delivery. In particular, 5G networks need to support three typical usage scenarios, namely, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications (mMTC). On the one hand, UAVs can be leveraged as cost-effective aerial platforms to provide ground users with enhanced communication services by exploiting their high cruising altitude and controllable maneuverability in three-dimensional (3D) space. On the other hand, providing such communication services simultaneously for both UAV and ground users poses new challenges due to the need for ubiquitous 3D signal coverage as well as the strong air-ground network interference. Besides the requirement of high-performance wireless communications, the ability to support effective and efficient sensing as well as network intelligence is also essential for 5G-and-beyond 3D heterogeneous wireless networks with coexisting aerial and ground users. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the latest research efforts on integrating UAVs into cellular networks, with an emphasis on how to exploit advanced techniques (e.g., intelligent reflecting surface, short packet transmission, energy harvesting, joint communication and radar sensing, and edge intelligence) to meet the diversified service requirements of next-generation wireless systems. Moreover, we highlight important directions for further investigation in future work.

A Comprehensive Overview on 5G-and-Beyond Networks With UAVs: From Communications to Sensing and Intelligence

The heated 5G network deployment race has already begun with the rapid progress in standardization efforts, backed by the current market availability of 5G-enabled network equipment, ongoing 5G spectrum auctions, early launching of non-standalone 5G network services in a few countries, among others. In this paper, we study current and future wireless networks from the viewpoint of energy efficiency (EE) and sustainability to meet the planned network and service evolution toward, along, and beyond 5G, as also inspired by the findings of the EU Celtic-Plus SooGREEN Project. We highlight the opportunities seized by the project efforts to enable and enrich this green nature of the network as compared to existing technologies. In specific, we present innovative means proposed in SooGREEN to monitor and evaluate EE in 5G networks and beyond. Further solutions are presented to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint in the different network segments. The latter spans proposed virtualized/cloud architectures, efficient polar coding for fronthauling, mobile network powering via renewable energy and smart grid integration, passive cooling, smart sleeping modes in indoor systems, among others. Finally, we shed light on the open opportunities yet to be investigated and leveraged in future developments.

/pdf/green-mobile-networks-for-5g-and-beyond-nz8rpfn37k.pdf

Green mobile networks for 5G and beyond

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have acquired remarkable popularity, thanks to their variety of applications in numerous domains spanning from surveillance, health to agriculture and smart cities. UAVs are also enabler in wireless communication that has potential features such as ubiquitous and reliable connectivity, fast and easy deployment, adaptive altitude, higher chance of line of sight (LOS) propagation path, higher mobility and flexibility. There are numerous surveys that summarized these advantages for different situations and scenarios. However, none of these surveys discussed the role of UAVs in public safety communications from the energy efficiency perspective. In this paper, we review the existing literature for UAV communication with taking into account the energy consumption criteria, and propose a multi-layered network architecture incorporating UAVs for public safety communication. Future research directions are also discussed.

/pdf/role-of-uavs-in-public-safety-communications-energy-21eknt8r40.pdf

Role of UAVs in Public Safety Communications: Energy Efficiency Perspective

The 5G communication systems will enable enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low-latency, and massive connectivity services. Broadband and low-latency services are indispensable to public safety (PS) communication during natural or man-made disasters. Recently, 3GPP-LTE has emerged as a promising candidate to enable broadband PS communications. In this article, first we present six major PS-LTE enabling services and the current status of PS-LTE in 3GPP releases. Then, we discuss the spectrum bands allocated for PS-LTE in major countries by ITU. Finally, we propose a disaster resilient three-layered architecture for PS-LTE (DR-PSLTE). This architecture consists of an SDN layer to provide centralized control, UAV cloudlet layer to facilitate edge computing or to enable the emergency communication link, and a radio access layer. The proposed architecture is flexible and combines the benefits of SDNs and edge computing to efficiently meet the delay requirements of various PS-LTE services. Numerical results verified that under the proposed DR-PSLTE architecture, delay is reduced by 20 percent as compared with the

UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication

Smart grid is an emerging research field of the current decade. The distinguished features of the smart grid are monitoring capability with data integration, advanced analysis to support system control, enhanced power security and effective communication to meet the power demand. Efficient energy consumption and minimum costs are also included in the prodigious features of smart grid. The smart grid implementation requires intelligent interaction between the power generating and consuming devices that can be achieved by installing devices capable of processing data and communicating it to various parts of the grid. The efficiency of these devices is greatly dependent on the selection and implementation of the advance digital signal processing techniques. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the applications of signal processing techniques in smart grids, plus the challenges and shortcomings of these techniques. Furthermore, this paper also outlines some future research directions related to applications of signal processing in smart grids.

/pdf/recent-advances-of-the-signal-processing-techniques-in-2o0txarz9z.pdf

Recent advances of the signal processing techniques in future smart grids

The topology of grounding grid is important for diagnosing its status, which plays a critical role in the safety of personnel and stable operation of power system. The electromagnetic field method and derivative of surface magnetic flux density on the line has been used to measure the branch position in case the grid is parallel to the plane of earth surface that in practice is unknown while the node points and connections were not discussed. This paper introduces a method that uses derivative of surface flux density on circles and lines in a systematic order to find the position of the grid in the plane of the earth surface and connecting the nodes to measure the full topology. This method even identifies any angled branch present in the mesh of a grid. Software simulations and experimental tests verify that the method is feasible and can be applied to identify the topology of a grounding grid.

/pdf/topology-measurement-of-substation-s-grounding-grid-by-using-a4408lkh47.pdf

Topology Measurement of Substation's Grounding Grid by Using Electromagnetic and Derivative Method

Grounding grid is responsible for driving lightning and short circuit currents into ground. Faults in substation grounding grid can lead to significant rise in surface potential and ultimately loss to power system and operators. This paper proposes a novel technique based on derivative method to diagnose breakpoints in grounding grid. Derivative of surface magnetic flux density on circle results in peak at conductor’s location. Once a conductor is broken the flow of current and surface magnetic field ceases, which is recognized by the absence of peak at corresponding conductor’s location. The use of circle even enables this method for diagnosing diagonal branch. Furthermore, the method is analyzed for soil of different resistivities and monolayer and multilayer soils. Simulation results show that the proposed method is feasible for breakpoint diagnosis of grounding grid without excavation.

Breakpoint Diagnosis of Substation Grounding Grid Using Derivative Method

The fifth-generation (5G) communication systems will enable enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency, and massive connectivity services. The broadband and low-latency services are indispensable to public safety (PS) communication during natural or man-made disasters. Recently, the third generation partnership project long term evolution (3GPPLTE) has emerged as a promising candidate to enable broadband PS communications. In this article, first we present six major PS-LTE enabling services and the current status of PS-LTE in 3GPP releases. Then, we discuss the spectrum bands allocated for PS-LTE in major countries by international telecommunication union (ITU). Finally, we propose a disaster resilient three-layered architecture for PS-LTE (DR-PSLTE). This architecture consists of a software-defined network (SDN) layer to provide centralized control, an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) cloudlet layer to facilitate edge computing or to enable emergency communication link, and a radio access layer. The proposed architecture is flexible and combines the benefits of SDNs and edge computing to efficiently meet the delay requirements of various PS-LTE services. Numerical results verified that under the proposed DR-PSLTE architecture, delay is reduced by 20% as compared with the conventional centralized computing architecture.

Aamir Qamar

Papers

UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication

Recent advances of the signal processing techniques in future smart grids

Topology Measurement of Substation's Grounding Grid by Using Electromagnetic and Derivative Method

Breakpoint Diagnosis of Substation Grounding Grid Using Derivative Method

UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication