The Enhancement of Communication Technologies and Networks for Smart Grid Applications

Abstract: The current electrical grid is perhaps the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century. However, it is increasingly outdated and overburdened, leading to costly blackouts and burnouts. For this and various other reasons,transformation efforts are underway to make the current electrical grid smarter. A reliable, universal and secure communication infrastructure is mandatory for the implementation and deployment of the future smart grid. A special interest is given to the design of efficient and robust network architecture capable of managing operation and control of the next generation power grid. For this purpose new wired and wireless technologies are emerging in addition to the formerly applied to help upgrade the current power grid. In this paper we will give an overview of smart grid reference model, and a comprehensive survey of the available networks for the smart grid and a critical review of the progress of wired and wireless communication technologies for smart grid communication infrastructure. And we propose end to end communication architecture for Home Area Networks (HANs), Neighborhood Area Networks (NANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs) for smart grid applications. We believe that this work will provide appreciated insights for the novices who would like to follow related research in the SG domain.