A Grouped System Architecture for Smart Grids Based AMI Communications Over LTE

摘要

A smart grid based Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), is a technologythat enables the utilities to monitor and control the electricity consumptionthrough a set of various smart meters (SMs) connected via a two waycommunication infrastructure. One of the key challenges for smart grids is howto connect a large number of devices. On the other hand, 4G Long Term Evolution(LTE), the latest standard for mobile communications, was developed to providestable service performance and higher data rates for a large number of mobileusers. Therefore, LTE is considered a promising solution for wide areaconnectivity for SMs. In this paper, a grouped hierarchal architecture for SMscommunications over LTE is introduced. Then, an efficient grouped schedulingtechnique is proposed for SMs transmissions over LTE. The proposed architectureefficiently solves the overload problem due to AMI traffic and guarantees afull monitoring and control for energy consumption. The results of oursuggested solution showed that LTE can serve better for smart grids based AMIwith particular grouping and scheduling scheme. In addition, the presentedtechnique can able to be used in urban areas having high density of SMs.