Energy Efficient Self-Sustaining Wireless Neighborhood Area Network Design for Smart Grid

Neighborhood area network (NAN) is one of the most important sections in smart grid communications. It connects residential customers as part of a two-way communication infrastructure responsible for transmitting power grid sensing and measuring status, as well as the control messages. In this paper, we propose a cost-effective, flexible, and sustainable NAN design using wireless technologies such as IEEE 802.11s and IEEE 802.16, as well as renewable energy such as solar power. We propose an optimization problem to minimize total cost. To solve the problem, we also study the problem of selecting the optimal number of gateways in a NAN. Moreover, in order to achieve fairness for the customers and to meet the most critical latency requirements, we propose geographical deployment methods for gateway data aggregate points (DAPs). Different transmission power of each gateway DAP is also carefully determined for the fairness, as well as for the maximum power efficiency. Unlike other researches using game theoretical approaches in multiaccess systems, we manage to achieve the global optimum solution and our results are more energy efficient.