Plenary Lecture

Current Communications Networks Status for Smart Grid

Professor Zoran Bojkovic
Full Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Belgrade
Serbia
E-mail: z.bojkovic@yahoo.com

Abstract: With increasing interest from both the academic and industrial communities, this work is planned to keep the communities up to date about the developments in communication technology in the smart grid.
Smart grid can be defined as an electric system that uses information two-way cyber-secure communication technologies and computational intelligence in an integrated fashion across the entire spectrum of the energy system from the generation to the end points of consumption of the electricity. Some of the key requirements of the smart grid from the aspects of global multimedia communication include: integration of renewable energy resources, active customer participation to enable energy conservation, secure communications, better utilization of existing assets to address long term sustainability, management of distributed generation and information storage, integration of communication and control across the information system to provide interoperability and open systems as well as to increase safety and operational flexibility. Three fundamental functionalities are desirable for the communication infrastructure of the smart grid : sensing, transmission, and control. Embeded sensing is carried out by a large number of smart meters or sensors to detect the states of the various points of the grid in a real-time manner. Two-way transmission links should be established for data transport between sensors and control centers. Control instructions are delivered from the smart meters or sensors located in different places to support efficient operations of the smart grid and reliable access to grid components. To fulfill these purposes, the smart grid infrastructure has to integrate enabling networking technologies. The communication infrastructure of the smart grid has to cover the entire region with the intention to connect a large set of nodes. Thus, the communication infrastructure is envisioned to be a multilayer structure that extends across the whole smart grid from the home area to the neighborhood area and the wide area. Home area networks ( HANs ) communicate with various smart devices to provide energy efficient management and demand response. Neighborhood area networks ( NANs ) connect multiple HANs to local access points. Wide area networks ( WANs ) provide communication links between the NANs and the utility systems to transfer information. This three-layered structure of the communications networks provides a potential operation of the smart grid to work economically,efficiently, reliably and securely. The design of the communication network associated with the smart grid involves detailed analysis of its communication requirements, a proposal of the appropriate protocol architecture, the choice of the most suitable technologies for each case study, and a scheme for the resultant heterogeneous network management system.
This work presents key issues to current communications networks status for smart grid. At first, te focus is on components and communication requirements. The main component of the smart grid is the sensor network with a system of distributed sensor nodes that interact among themselves with processing and routing capabilities using either wireless or wired medium. Smart grid networks will manage real-time information and will collect information from established intelligent electronic devices for control and automation process. In the second part, issues related to smart grid communication architecture will be discussed. Next, mesh network architecture using IEEE802.11s as its core technology is described. Finally, the mesh routing on a hybrid tree-based routing protocol in a multiple gateway environment, will be performed. Further research issues conclude this presentation.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Zoran Bojkovic (http://www.zoranbojkovic.com) is a Full Professor of Electrical Engeenering at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and a permanent visiting professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, TX, USA, EE Department, Multimedia System Lab. He was a visiting professor in more than 20 Universities worldwide and has taught a number of courses in the field of digital signal processing, computer networks and multimedia communications. Prof. Bojkovic is the co-author of 6 international books/monographies (Publishers: Prentice-Hall, Wiley, CRC Press, WSEAS Press, Editura Politechnica). Some of them have been published in Canada, Japan, China, Singapore, India and Romania. He is co-editor in 68 International Books and Conference Proceedings. He has published more than 430 papers in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and publications. His activities included serving as Editor-in-Chief in 2 International Journals and Associate Editor in 3 International Journals. Prof. Bojkovic was co-chair for more than 10 International Symposium and Conferences and has served of more than 50 International Symposiums and Conferences. He has conducted many keynote/plenary lectures, workshops/tutorials as well as seminars and participated in many international scientific and industrial prjects. He has been and is yet a consultant to industry, research institutes and academia. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and WSEAS, Member of EURASIP and IASTED, Member of SERSC, Korea, expert of IAMSET, full member of Engineering Academy of Serbia and a member of Serbian Scientific Society.