Evaluation of CDMA450 as communications technology for smart Grid applications

In this paper we investigate the suitability of the CDMA450 for smart grid applications. First we show the requirements imposed by the widely used smart grid applications to the communication solutions. Seconds we discuss a qualitative comparison between the most used communications technologies; namely GPRS, meshed RF and Power Line Communications (PLC). As shown in the paper from references, most of the investigations about smart grid communications focus on these technologies. Therefore, the goal of the present work is to develop a tool, which should compare the CDMA450 to GPRS and PLC under different deployment scenarios. This, an overview about the CDMA450 is given, with the major advantages offered by this technology. After that we describe assessment tool for the evaluation of needed investment (CAPEX) for the deployment of different technologies and costs for operational and maintenance of the network (OPEX) per year over the whole service time.