Performance analysis of Zigbee for energy transmission monitoring in smart grids

This paper studies the communication requirements for monitoring energy transmission in smart grid by wireless enabled overhead line sensors and the feasibility of using Zigbee communication for the overhead line monitoring application. The overhead line monitoring application involves communication between the measurement sensors mounted on the transmission line and a ground unit used for the fault detection application. The fault detection application needs a data throughput of 48kbps when sampling is done at 600 samples per second, and 76kbps when sampling is done at 1000 samples per second. Zigbee communication with 250kbps, appears to satisfy the data rate requirement, but a careful analysis shows that the effective throughput available under the application constraints is much lesser. The application needs careful design considering the data rate constraints. The paper presents an analysis on the effective throughput available when using Zigbee for the fault detection application, and derive the maximum sampling rate that the Zigbee communication link can support. Results from the theoretical analysis is supported with lab experiments to show that ZigBee is a feasible technology for overhead line fault monitoring for the planned infrastructure.