The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure

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

Multiagent Systems is the title of a collection of papers dedicated to surveying specific themes of Multiagent Systems (MAS) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). All of them authored by leading researchers of this dynamic multidisciplinary field.

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Multiagent systems: a modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence

A smart grid is a new form of electricity network with high fidelity power-flow control, self-healing, and energy reliability and energy security using digital communications and control technology. To upgrade an existing power grid into a smart grid, it requires significant dependence on intelligent and secure communication infrastructures. It requires security frameworks for distributed communications, pervasive computing and sensing technologies in smart grid. However, as many of the communication technologies currently recommended to use by a smart grid is vulnerable in cyber security, it could lead to unreliable system operations, causing unnecessary expenditure, even consequential disaster to both utilities and consumers. In this paper, we summarize the cyber security requirements and the possible vulnerabilities in smart grid communications and survey the current solutions on cyber security for smart grid communications.

/pdf/a-survey-on-cyber-security-for-smart-grid-communications-3ah12orzeu.pdf

A Survey on Cyber Security for Smart Grid Communications

Resonance conditions for a substrate-superstrate printed antenna geometry which allow for large antenna gain are presented. Asymptotic formulas for gain, beamwidth, and bandwidth are given, and the bandwidth limitation of the method is discussed. The method is extended to produce narrow patterns about the horizon, and directive patterns at two different angles.

Gain enhancement methods for printed circuit antennas

The collaborative and low-cost nature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) brings significant advantages over traditional communication technologies used in today's electric power systems. Recently, WSNs have been widely recognized as a promising technology that can enhance various aspects of today's electric power systems, including generation, delivery, and utilization, making them a vital component of the next-generation electric power system, the smart grid. However, harsh and complex electric- power-system environments pose great challenges in the reliability of WSN communications in smart grid applications. This paper starts with an overview of the application of WSNs for electric power systems along with their opportunities and challenges and opens up future work in many unexploited research areas in diverse smart-grid applications.

Wireless sensor network in smart grid technology: Challenges and opportunities

We propose in this article, a novel compact reconfigurable patch antenna with frequency diversity. This antenna can be tuned by changing the switching mode of two PIN diodes from the ON–ON state to OFF–OFF state to switch it over two different mobile communication technologies, namely 3G and 4G. The antenna has a simple geometry and a small structure, its dimensions are 45 × 38 × 1.5 mm3 and it is printed on an FR4 substrate with a thickness of 1.5 mm. The prototype of this antenna has been fabricated and tested. The measurement results confirmed the simulation predictions in terms of frequency diversity performances. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1622–1626, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27649

Compact reconfigurable dual frequency microstrip patch antenna for 3G and 4G mobile communication technologies

In this letter it is presented a Left-Handed Metamaterial design route based upon stacked arrays of screens made of complementary split rings resonators under normal incidence in the microwave regime. Computation of the dispersion diagram highlights the possibility to obtain backward waves provided the longitudinal lattice is small enough. The experimental results are in good agreement with the computed ones. The physics underlying the Left-Handed behavior is found to rely on electroinductive waves, playing the mutual capacitive coupling the major role to explain the phenomenon. Our route to Left-Handed metamaterial introduced in this paper based on stacking CSRRs screens can be scaled to millimeter and terahertz for future applications.

Electroinductive waves role in left-handed stacked complementary split rings resonators

Until recently, application developers could often assume a target environment that was homogeneous, reliable, secure, and centrally managed. However, with the advent of collaborative computing and data sharing, more and more new modes of interaction have evolved resulting in the need and use of distributed resources. Work within this community has led to the development of Grid technologies [1], which address precisely these problems. In grid computing, heterogeneous resources distributed geographically are virtualized as a unified whole. Grid computing, as a result, provides enormous opportunities in terms of resource sharing, maximization of resource utilization and virtualization of resources. Because of its immense potential, not only the scientific community, but also the IT enterprise communities are excited about its prospect. A recent survey ranked grid computing as sixth on priority lists for IT spending among industry professionals [5]. With this much interest, security becomes necessary to provide authentication, authorization, resource protection, secure communication, data confidentiality, data integrity, trust policies management, user key and credential management, service protection, and network security. This paper provides an insight classification of the different mechanisms and methods of security in grid computing environment, and also discusses the solutions for each category and its limitation in order to define the real problems in grid computing security. In our approach, we categorize the security solutions into Resources Level, Service Level, Authentication & Authorization Level, Information Level, and Management Level Solutions.

Grid computing security mechanisms: State-of-the-art

With a world wild increase in electricity demand, smart grids emerged as a solution for various problems within the current electrical grid. Some novel aspects about smart grids are the use renewable energy sources, energy storage and also allowing the user to take some decisions to control energy use. Microgrids are building blocks of smart grids and given that academic campuses are very good contributors to energy consumption, their energy consumption can be efficiently controlled by using an energy management system. This paper focuses on the importance of smart campuses with an emphasis on the importance of an energy management system.

Mohamed Essaaidi

Papers

Wireless sensor network in smart grid technology: Challenges and opportunities

Compact reconfigurable dual frequency microstrip patch antenna for 3G and 4G mobile communication technologies

Electroinductive waves role in left-handed stacked complementary split rings resonators

Grid computing security mechanisms: State-of-the-art

Smart campus microgrid: Advantages and the main architectural components