Improving performance of TCP-based applications in power line communications for smart grids

Information and communication technologies play a fundamental role in the development of Smart Grids. Smart Grids work in the optimization and efficient integration of the electric power lines networks with different types of elements in the generation, transmission and distribution of power. This work focuses on enhancing the throughput performance of data transmission, in scenarios where data integrity is a priority for TCP-based applications deployed in Smart Grid networks employing Power Line Communications (PLC) as the communications technology. More specifically, we propose the implementation of TCP proxy nodes in regeneration units deployed across the PLC network. The TCP proxy node acts as an intermediary for data transmission reducing latency by sending confirmations prematurely to the transmitter node when a data packet arrives at the regeneration unit. The regeneration unit will also forward any information that is queued more expeditiously in the event of a packet loss, which may be a common case considering the channel behaviour in PLC networks. The proposed scheme achieves an improvement of throughput in different PLC scenarios. The scheme is validated through analytical results and simulations.