The smart metering and communication methods used in smart grid are being extensively studied owing to widespread applications of smart grid. Although the monitoring and control processes are widely used in industrial systems, the energy management requirements at both service supplier and consumer side for individuals promoted the evolution of smart grid. In this paper, it is aimed to disclose in a clear and clean way that what smart grid is and what kind of communication methods are used. All components of a smart grid are introduced in a logical way to facilitate the understanding, and communication methods are presented regarding to their improvements, advantages, and lacking feature. The developing generation, transmission, distribution and customer appliances are surveyed in terms of smart grid integration. The communication technologies are introduced as wireline and wireless classification where the key features are also tabulated. The security requirements of hardware and software in a smart grid are presented according to their cyber and physical structures.

A survey on smart metering and smart grid communication

Smart grid has modernized the way electricity is generated, transported, distributed, and consumed by integrating advanced sensing, communications, and control in the day-to-day operation of the grid. Electricity is a core utility for the functioning of society and for the services provided by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Several concepts of the smart grid, such as dynamic pricing, distributed generation, and demand management, have significantly impacted the operation of ICT services, in particular, communication networks and data centers. Ongoing energy-efficiency and operational expenditures reduction efforts in communication networks and data centers have gained another dimension with those smart grid concepts. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the smart grid-driven approaches in energy-efficient communications and data centers, and the interaction between smart grid and information and communication infrastructures. Although the studies on smart grid, energy-efficient communications, and green data centers have been separately surveyed in previous studies, to this end, research that falls in the intersection of those fields has not been properly classified and surveyed yet. We start our survey by providing background information on the smart grid and continue with surveying smart grid-driven approaches in energy-efficient communication systems, followed by energy, cost and emission minimizing approaches in data centers, and the corresponding cloud network infrastructure. We discuss the open issues in smart grid-driven approaches in ICTs and point some important research directions such as the distributed renewable energy generation capability-coupled communication infrastructures, optimum energy-efficient network design for the smart grid environment, the impact of green communication techniques on the reliability and latency requirements of smart grid data, workload consolidation with smart grid-awareness, and many more.

Energy-Efficient Information and Communication Infrastructures in the Smart Grid: A Survey on Interactions and Open Issues

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) enable a great opportunity to develop the residential demand response that is relevant in smart grid applications. Demand response (DR) aims to manage the required demand to match the available energy resources without adding new generation capacity. Expanding the DR to cover the residential sector in addition to the industrial and commercial sectors gives rise to a wide range of challenges. This study presents an overview of the literature on residential DR systems, load-scheduling techniques, and the latest ICT that supports residential DR applications. Furthermore, challenges are highlighted and analyzed, which are likely to become relevant research topics with regard to the residential DR of smart grid. The literature review shows that most DR schemes suffer from an externality problem that involves the effect of high-level customer consumption on the price rates of other customers, especially during peak period. A recommendation for using adaptive multi-consumption level pricing scheme is presented to overcome this challenge. *Corresponding author at: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Tenaga Nasional Universiti, P13-B-07-06, Sri Cempaka, Jalan Sepakat Indah 2/2 Taman Sep, Kajang 43000 Selangor, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 183262643.

A review of residential demand response of smart grid

The smart grid is arguably one of the most complex cyber-physical systems (CPS). Complex security challenges have been revealed in both the physical and the cyber parts of the smart grid, and an integrative analysis on the cyber-physical (CP) security is emerging. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the critical attack threats and defence strategies in the smart grid. We start this survey with an overview of the smart grid security from the CP perspective, and then focuses on prominent CP attack schemes with significant impact on the smart grid operation and corresponding defense solutions. With an in-depth review of the attacks and defences, we then discuss the opportunities and challenges along the smart grid CP security. We hope this paper raises awareness of the CP attack threats and defence strategies in complex CPS-based infrastructures such as the smart grid and inspires research effort toward the development of secure and resilient CP infrastructures.

Cyber-physical attacks and defences in the smart grid: a survey

The modern electric power systems are going through a revolutionary change because of increasing demand of electric power worldwide, developing political pressure and public awareness of reducing carbon emission, incorporating large scale renewable power penetration, and blending information and communication technologies with power system operation. These issues initiated in establishing microgrid concept which has gone through major development and changes in last decade, and recently got a boost in its growth after being blessed by smart grid technologies. The objective of this paper is to presents a detailed technical overview of microgrid and smart grid in light of present development and future trend. First, it discusses microgrid architecture and functions. Then, smart features are added to the microgrid to demonstrate the recent architecture of smart grid. Finally, existing technical challenges, communication features, policies and regulation, etc. are discussed from where the future smart grid architecture can be visualized.

Enhancing smart grid with microgrids: Challenges and opportunities

The necessity to promote smart grid (SG) has been recognized with a strong consensus. The SG integrates electrical grids and communication infrastructures and forms an intelligent electricity network working with all connected components to deliver sustainable electricity supplies. Many advanced communication technologies have been identified for SG applications with a potential to significantly enhance the overall efficiency of power grids. In this paper, the challenges and applications of communication technologies in SG are discussed. In particular, we identify three major challenges to implement SG communication systems, including standards interoperability, cognitive access to unlicensed radio spectra, and cyber security. The issues to implement SG communications on an evolutional path and its future trends are also addressed. The aim of this paper is to offer a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art researches on SG communications.

Smart Grid Communication: Its Challenges and Opportunities

Smart grid is an intelligent power network featured by its two-way flows of electricity and information. With an integrated communication infrastructure, smart grid manages the operation of all connected components to provide reliable and sustainable electricity supplies. Many advanced communication technologies have been identified for their applications in different domains of smart grid networks. This paper focuses on wireless communication networking technologies for smart grid neighborhood area networks (NANs). In particular, we aim to offer a comprehensive survey to address various important issues on implementation of smart grid NANs, including network topology, gateway deployment, routing algorithms, and security. We will identify four major challenges for the implementation of NANs, including timeliness management, security assurance, compatibility design, and cognitive spectrum access, based on which the future research directions are suggested.

Smart grid neighborhood area networks: a survey

To achieve 1000-fold capacity increase in 5G wireless communications, ultradense network (UDN) is believed to be one of the key enabling technologies. Most of the previous research activities on UDNs were based very much on human-to-human communications. However, to provide ubiquitous Internet of Things services, machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will play a critical role in 5G systems. As the number of machine-oriented connections increases, it is expected that supporting M2M communications is an essential requirement in all future UDNs. In this paper, we aim to bridge the gaps between M2M communications and UDNs, which were commonly considered as two separate issues in the literature. The paper begins with a brief introduction on M2M communications and UDNs, and then will discuss the issues on the roles of M2M communications in future UDNs. We will identify different ways to implement M2M communications in the UDNs from the perspectives of layered architecture, including physical, media access control, network, and application layers. Other two important issues, i.e., security and network virtualization, will also be addressed. Before the end of this paper, we will give a summary on identified research topics for future studies.

Machine-to-Machine Communications in Ultra-Dense Networks—A Survey

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is a promising technique for traffic offloading in next-generation cellular systems. However, the use of only direct D2D communications limits the advantages of D2D communications due to relatively long separation distances or poor link quality between source and destination user equipments (UEs). Relay-assisted D2D communication was proposed as a supplement to direct D2D communications for enhancing traffic offloading capacity in long-term evolution–advanced (LTE-A) systems. This work aims to design a relay UE selection strategy for D2D communications, which improves D2D communication performance significantly. We propose a cross-layer relay selection scheme that considers several criteria jointly, including end-to-end data rate, relay-capable UE (RUE) remaining battery time, and end-to-end transmission delay on relay-assisted D2D path. We show how to leverage these criteria at an eNB performing relay selection in D2D communications. In particular, an end-to-end delay estimation model is established based on queuing theory. Simulation results validate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of total amount of data transmitted under RUE remaining battery and end-to-end transmission delay.

On Relay Selection Schemes for Relay-Assisted D2D Communications in LTE-A Systems

D2D communication is an effective approach for traffic offloading in future cellular systems. However, only using direct D2D communication is not enough to fully exploit the advantages of D2D communications due to long distances or poor link quality between source and destination D2D UEs. This work aims to enhance the traffic offloading capacity of cellular-assisted D2D communication, taking into account D2D relays. In particular, we propose a unified model for D2D communication, in which two other D2D communication modes, that is, relay-assisted D2D and local route based D2D, are also supported by UEs in addition to direct D2D mode. We design radio protocol architectures for the three D2D modes and propose an eNB scheduling algorithm, which enables the eNB to perform joint scheduling on mode selection, radio resource allocation, and power coordination for all D2D pairs in each subframe. The effectiveness of our designs is validated by simulations.

Ruofei Ma

Papers

Smart Grid Communication: Its Challenges and Opportunities

Smart grid neighborhood area networks: a survey

Machine-to-Machine Communications in Ultra-Dense Networks—A Survey

On Relay Selection Schemes for Relay-Assisted D2D Communications in LTE-A Systems

Mode Selection, Radio Resource Allocation, and Power Coordination in D2D Communications