M2M communication in Smart Grids: Implementation scenarios and performance analysis

The idea of mass deployment of an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) for Smart Grids has been explored and evaluated in this paper. Since smart meters with a wireless interface that can connect to the utility provider´s server via a backhaul network forms the basic building block of an AMI, it is a good paradigm for an M2M application in Smart Grids. The relevant standardization efforts by 3GPP and ETSI are discussed along with other perceived application scenarios for M2M communication. An example architecture is then proposed and evaluated with clusters of smart meters that transfer their data via UMTS network to a server. The performance evaluation is carried out considering network throughput, latency, and the data generated by the smart meters using both TCP and UDP traffic. The results indicate that there is a substantial reduction in delay when UDP traffic is considered when compared to TCP traffic generated by the smart meters.