Study on Smart Grid Communications System based on New Generation Wireless Technology

Zhao Feng
China Electric Power Research Institute Beijing, China fengzhao@sgcc.com.cn
AbstractThis paper presents a smart grid communications system based on the new generation wireless technology. Based on the characteristics of new generation broadband wireless communications technologies and wireless communications demands in smart grid, the smart grid wireless communications network is proposed, including three network modes, distributed network based on ROF(radio-over-fiber), cooperative relay network, indoor network based on femtocell (micro-cellular base station) or Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, focusing on applications of smart distribution and electricity, the wireless communications system is proposed, which is an effective solution for the last mile access. And, based on TDD 4G, the experiment of high rate transmission, video on demand, remote monitoring and so on is made. Based on this, the application mode of new generation wireless communications technologies in smart grid is given. The study of new generation wireless communications system and application experiment provides a reference guide for application in smart grid. Keywords-smart grid, ROF, LTE, 4G, relay network, PON, FEMTOCELL

Zhang Yuexia
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Beijing, China buptzhyx@gmail.com smart grid. In recent years, with development of wireless communication technology such as LTE[2], 4G[3], power fiber communication and ROF, the solution of wireless communications system based on new generation wireless technology, becomes a good option. This paper presents a smart grid communications system based on new generation wireless technology, and built the experimental system to test 4G data transmission performance. II. DESCRIPTION OF NEW GENERATION WIRELESS COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY AND DEMANDS OF SMART GRID New generation wireless communication technology The broadband wireless communications technology such as LTE and 4G has many inherent advantages, when used in smart gird. LTE and 4G are bidirectional communications systems with wide coverage and suitable for widespread terminal access and remote control. LTE (Long Term Evolution) project is the evolution of 3G, started in 2004 Toronto 3GPP meeting. LTE is a transition between 3G and 4G technology, which is the global standard for 3.9G, with uplink peak rate 50Mb / s and downlink 100 Mb / s; LTE-Advanced is generally considered as industry standard for 4G, with the uplink peak rate up to 500Mb / s and downlink 1Gb / s. the rate is 10 times the current GPRS system, and 500 times 3G rate. 4G network has the following characteristics[4]: smart antenna, software radio, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), OFDM is used to improve the rate of frequency division multiplexing, enhance anti-jamming capability, make the communications system be suit for resolve burst packet service. Using time division duplex mode and adjusting the frame structure of uplink and downlink time slots, 4G can flexibly change the uplink and downlink bandwidth, and accommodate uplink and downlink business to make resources used effectively. The MIMO is used in 4G communications system, which uses multiple antennas to suppress the fading channel, make channel capacity increasing linearly with the number of antennas increasing. Without increasing the bandwidth and transmit power, using MIMO, the wireless channel capacity can be significantly improved. At the same time, to ensure data reliability and reduce error rates, 4G system is not only using channel coding, interleaving and other technologies, but also hybrid automatic retransmission (HARQ) error control for the link[5,6]. All of the above advantages of 4G create good conditions for communication in smart grid. A.

I.

INTRODUCTION

With the global resources and environmental pressures increasing, the society requests higher demands for environmental protection, energy conservation and sustainable development. In China, the energy mainly comes from coal. 75.7% of electricity capacity installed is thermal power, more than 50% of the coal is used for power generation, and 80% of carbon dioxide emission comes from coal. Power plays an important role in reducing carbon emission. Chinese government proposes that by 2020, the carbon emissions per unit of GDP (GDP) reduced from 45% to 40% than 2005[1], and takes it as binding target in national economic and social development plan. The future power grid should be more secure, reliable, clean and high quality, and meets a variety needs of energy types of power generation, realize highly market-based electricity trading, improve efficiency and effectiveness of large power network assets, and supply more quality services. Many countries and organizations such as United States and the European Union unanimously make plan to build flexible, clean, safe, economical, friendly, smart grid. State Grid Corporation of China proposed target of strong and smart gird with digitization, automation, interactive features. The high-speed, bi-directional, real-time, integrated communications system is the foundation of smart gird. The construction of communications system is the first step in
This work was supported by the State Grid Corporation of China.

978-1-4577-0321-8/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

1673

B. Wireless communication demands in smart gird In power production, the fiber is suitable for communication of real-time power service control with high reliability, low latency platform. The broadband wireless communications is suitable for non-real-time monitoring and management services, which can use application-layer retransmission mechanism to guarantee non-real-time information. Considering these factors, the wireless technology should be used in distribution and electricity generally[7]. Take the 110kV substation as an example, the broadband wireless communication application mode of distribution network is analyzed in its coverage area, the detail is shown as the following. 1) Smart electricity The customers real-time electricity consumption, power of smart home appliances, power distribution status and other information will be collected to the power control center, and the center sends real-time electric price, intelligent appliance control and other information to user, and the communication demands of IPTV, IP telephony, broadband Internet access, security control and other communications should be considered. 2) Load demand management For the special user with large load, the load demand side management is necessary, including load forecasting, power quality monitoring, load control parameters downloading, etc. 3) Advanced Asset Management In smart gird, the life cycle management of equipment should be made to improve network asset utilization. All the states of network devices need to be monitored, which can improve maintenance efficiency, extend equipment life. The monitoring information points of substations in the power distribution network area, includes transformers, circuit breakers, surge arresters and secondary equipment, line fault indicators, etc. 4) Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition of distributed energy stations The control information of automatic generation control and automatic voltage control needs to exchange with the power distribution network control center. 5) On-site video monitoring The power on-site images and dynamic performance data is monitored for operator to deal with the problem quickly and accurately. III. WIRELESS NETWORK MODE

traditional wireless network, ROF network is high bandwidth, low loss, low-cost, simple structure, unified management of resources, which can dynamically allocate bandwidth with actually communication demands[8]. In the area to be covered, the appropriate location is selected, and the distributed frontend RF and antenna is set. The RF or IF signals are transmit in fiber between the antenna and the base station. Different antennas node have their own coverage areas and overlap among them. In this way, a single base station can achieve a wider range of continuous wireless coverage to solve coverage on hot spots. With distributed coverage, the terminal provides access in different directions, which make multi-channel and multi-antenna transmission possible. Fig.1 represents a cooperative distributed network based on ROF. The antenna element of base station is pulled away from signal processing unit by ROF, form distributed multi-cell, and serve for user in smart gird.

Figure 1. ROF based cooperative distributed network in smart grid

In different Distributed ROF cell, signals are transmit by cooperative multi-point transmission way. As shown in Fig1, using inter-cell multi-users cooperative transmission, the ROF antennas, which belong to the same base station, use cooperative MIMO to improve service quality for smart house. The ROF distributed antennas use MU-MIMO, combined with pre-coding or beamforming approach to realize cooperative multi-point transmission, and improve QoS for smart building. Further, user can use ROF antenna, which is belong to different base station, to realize multi-point cooperative transmission, and use joint processing / sending way to improve the QoS for smart house.

A. ROF based cooperative distributed network Based on ROF, the distributed network was provided, which uses distributed antenna to realize cross-regional cover age of target area from different angles and location. Through the fiber, the signal of remote RF antenna is sent to central node for cooperative processing. The ROF-based distributed network can solve continuous broadband coverage problems in complex communication environment. Compared with the

B. Cooperative relay based network The cooperative relaying based network[9] provides a good communication solution for smart grid. Through using the relay nodes(RS: Relay Station) between base station (eNodeB: Evolved Node B) and user in smart gird, it can realize direct transmission channel link or forwarding link with multiple RS nodes, and achieve cooperative communication with higher

1674

diversity gain, and improve signal quality of cell edge, expand the cell coverage area. TDD is a duplex wireless communications system, which can use symmetry properties of the channel to increase transmission efficiency, and allocate resources of up and down wireless channel flexibly. The TDD mode is more suitable for cooperative relay transmission system, which completes forwarding relay on-demand. The relay node is multi-hop relay transmission or cooperative relay transmission. 1) Multi-hop relay network Using relay nodes, the multi-hop relay network can reduce path loss between source node and destination node, extend coverage area, and decrease transmission power. The structure is shown in Fig2.

comes out, and 3GPP2/3GPP LTE has incorporated it into R8 standard, and name it HomeNB. Through lower power on the indoor "point" coverage, it can reduce capacity of macro base station, and improve the capacity of the whole network, provide indoor high-speed, high-quality wireless access. The femtocell-based network can provide low power consumption, short-range wireless data access, and its coverage is generally 10 to 50 meters, supports up to 4-6 users, and uses PON as backhaul network. In addition, indoor wireless network can also use Wi-Fi to realize indoor wireless coverage, and Wi-Fi can use PON or LTE/4G as backhaul network. IV. WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM BASED ON NEW
GENERATION WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY

Figure 2. Multi-hop relay transmission network in smart grid

2) Cooperative relay network The cooperative relay network integrates wireless space diversity and multi-hop relay transmission, through the source node and multi-antenna relay nodes cooperating and sharing, forms virtual multi-antenna transmission, overcomes transmission distance limited problem. Without adding antennas, it can achieve multi-antenna transmission gain, and simplify the routing problem through two-hop relay, increases the effective information rate, and improves the user's QoS performance. The structure is shown in Fig3.

In power system, there are a lot of fiber resources, includes OPGW (optical fiber composite overhead ground wire), ADSS (All-dielectric Self-supporting Optical Cable), and so on. In recent years, OPLC (low fiber composite cable) comes out, which compounds fiber in low voltage cable. The composite cable has a dual low voltage power and capacity of optical communication, which is suitable for the voltage level, 0.6/1kV and below. The wireless network can take full advantage of the rich power fiber resources. As shown in Fig.4, the wireless and wired access network can use OPLC[10] cable, or laid fiber along the power lines. The overall network architecture of wireless communications system includes three layers, core network layer, convergence network Layer and access network layer. 1) Access network layer In wireless access layer, The ROF-based distributed network is used to realize smart grid service access. In wired access layer, the PON[11] network is used to realize wired access. The network between PON ONU and OLT between eNodeB and antenna can use OPLC or the fiber laid along the power lines. 2) Convergence network layer In convergence layer, SDH / MSTP core network is used to connect PON OLT. 3) Core network layer The core network includes the backbone telecommunication network and mobile core network, and they are connected between each other. The core network located in control center of Power Company, and the core network connect the internet to provide internet access. The EPC (Evolved Packet Core) includes MME (mobility management entity), GW (gateway) and other functional entities. MME is responsible for all control functions of user and session management. GW is responsible for the user plane data transmission, switching, forwarding and routing. The power company can build the EPC or share the EPC with Telecommunication Company.

Figure 3. Cooperative relay transmission network in smart grid

C. Femtocell-based indoor network The cell radius reducing or the distance shortening between the sender and the receiver is effective way to improve system capacity and cell coverage. For this reason, the femtocell

1675

community, etc. In the above applications, the cooperative relay transmission can used to improve wireless transmission quality, and expand transmission area. If some place has FTTH deployed already, the femeto network or Wi-Fi can used to cover indoor area, and use FTTH as backhaul network, by connecting with PON ONU node. In an addition, the femtocell is limited of GPS due to environmental conditions, but the PON system can provide clock / time service to femtocell. With femetocell or Wi-Fi, the efficiency of indoor coverage of wireless networks can greatly enhanced, the user experience can greatly be improved. As shown in Fig.6, that is an 110kv distribution network applications based on wireless communication network in smart grid, which achieved distributed wireless access of the smart substations, intelligent buildings, smart community, smart plant, smart grid power, etc.
Figure 4. Overall network of wireless communications system

The wired access network uses PON as a wireless base station backhaul network. As shown in Fig.5, The network architecture is the follows.

Figure 6. 110kv distribution network applications based on wireless communication network in smart grid

V.

WIRELESS TRANSMISSION EXPERIMENT WITH 4G

Figure 5. Wired access network with PON

The power distribution master station located in power network control center, and the power distribution network sub-station is generally 110kV sub-station or 35 kV sub-station. The SDH / MSTP can be used to connect master station and sub-stations[12]. Generally the OLT equipment installed in the substation (power distribution network station), and the ONU device is placed on loop-network cabinet, branch box, weak well in building , corridor, home and other places, for access of smart community, smart building, smart plant, smart home, etc. The location of LTE or 4g eNodeB can share place with PON network, such as loop-network cabinet, weak well and so on. The ROF based antenna will be deployed in the target area and achieve cellular coverage. LTE/4G can used to realize the wireless coverage of power substation, factories, offices,

The wireless transmission experimental system provided fits the requirements of IMT-Advanced 4G Gbps TDD system, and the air interface rate of the system can reach up to 1 Gbps[13]. As shown in Fig.7, the mobile terminal (MT) executes wireless transmission and other related function, the terminal equipment (TE) executes end to end application; The mobile terminal (MT) includes four receive antennas; AP access point is a connection point between wireless network and wired network, which includes six antennas. AP console give intuitive graphical interface to monitor the status of the wireless link, including the empty rate, channel correlation, constellation diagram, business rate and bit error rate.

Figure 7. Wireless transmission experimental system based on 4G

1676

1) Video on demand experiment The high-definition video on demand experimental scenario is shown in Fig.7, which simulates the acquisition of IPTV live video. The experiment procedure is shown as the following. a) When system Link is stable, AP-side terminal request a media video transmission; a terminal can test multiple highdefinition video. b) MT Server responds for AP's request and start services. c) Play multi-channel high-definition demo video terminal to verify system link transmission capacity. After 1000 times tests, the result is the following. The transmission delay is less than 100ms; Frame Error Rate is less than 0.5%; Maximum Number stream of HD video can reach up to 55 with MPEG-4 coding. The video MOS (Mean Opinion Score)[14] is 5, the highest value, means the user experience is very good. Depends on experimental data, 4G network can meet the transmission requirements of video on demand in smart house. 2) Video monitoring Experiment Live high-definition monitoring experimental scenario is shown in Fig.7, which simulates the acquisition of live video in smart power station. The experiment procedure is shown as the following. a) When system Link is stable, AP-side terminal request video transmission. The terminal PC2 shows high-definition monitoring video. b) MT Business Server respond for AP's request and start services. c) Show video, and system link transmission capacity can be verified; After 1000 times tests, the result is the following. The resolution of video image is 1152*864; the delay is 0.3s-0.9s, mainly caused by video capture card; Frame Error Rate is less than 0.5%. Depends on experimental data, 4G network can meet real-time monitoring in smart power station. 3) Wireless FTP transmission Experiment FTP transmission experimental scenario is shown in Fig.7, which simulates the transmission capability of 4G in smart grid. The experiment procedure is shown as the following. a) When system Link is stable, AP-side FTP client starts to connect the MT side FTP server using software FileZilla FTP, and request file transmission. b) MT side computer start to receive FTP file. c) The experiment tests real-time FTP upload success / failure rate, FTP download success / failure rate, average rate of FTP upload and downloads, etc.. After 1000 times tests, the result is the following. The FTP peak rate of upload and download is 400~500Mbps, and the success rate is 100%. Depends on experimental data, 4G network can meet the required of business transmission in smart grid.

VI.

CONCLUSIONS

According to the new generation of wireless communications system proposed and the experimental results, the application mode of new generation wireless communications technologies in smart grid is given in the following. The wireless communication network based on LTE or 4G is an appropriate solution for smart grid, which can effectively resolve the last mile access problem. Taking full advantage of fiber resources in power system, the ROF-based distributed network can used as wireless access network for smart grid, which has the characters of high bandwidth, low loss, low-cost, simple structure, allocated bandwidth dynamically. The wireless relay network can improve the signal quality in cell edge, and expand the coverage, which is an effective wireless access mean to improve wireless network capacity. The femtocell-based indoor network can reduce the operational capacity of macro base station, improve the capacity of the whole network, provide high-quality wireless access service, and is useful complement of the macro network. PON is the main access network technology with the features of large capacity, long transmission distance, low cost, full-service support. Since the current PON network, which is already built, can be used as backhaul network, the investment can be reserved, and the communication performance can be guaranteed. According to the transmission experiments, 4G network has characters of low latency, high bandwidth, and can meet wireless communications needs of applications in smart grid. The proposed new generation wireless communications system is an effective solution for wireless communications in smart grid. REFERENCES
[1] Zhao Bingzhen Liu Jianming Li Ning Zhuang Zichao Application of converged communication in smart power consumption interactive service .International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, pp.99-103,Feb13-16, 2011. Requirements for EUTRA and EUTRAN, 3GPP TR 25.913 V7.30, Mar, 2006. Zhao Feng, Li Hong-jia, et al. Research and Application of Mobile Video Conference in State Grid ICT Networks. Telecommunications for Electric Power System , No11, vol.30, pp.1-6, July.2009. Zhao Feng, Liu Jianming, et al. Application of 3G/4G Wireless Communication Technology in new generation of ICT Network model, Telecommunications for Electric Power System, No7, vol.30, pp. 1-3, July.2009. Qing Xiuhua, Cheng Chuanhui, et al.A study of some key technologies of 4G system. 2008 3rd IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, p 2292-2295, 2008 Miki T,Ohya T,Yoshino H,et al, The overview of the 4th generation mobile communication system, Information,Communications and Signal Processing,2005 Fifth International Conference,pp.1551-1555, Dec.2005. HUANG Sheng. Analysis on the demand for communication services in smart distribution network and communication technical scheme. Telecommunications for Electric Power System , No212, vol.31, pp.1012, June.2010. Wake D Trends and prospeets for radio over fibre pieocells MicrowavePhotonies 2002 International Topical Meeting pp.21-24, Nov5-8 2002.

[2] [3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

1677

Ibrahim A S Sadek A K, Su W, et al, " Cooperative communications with relay selection :when to cooperate and whom to cooperate with. . IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications,2008,7(7):2814-2827. [10] Liu Jianming, Wang Jiye, Fan Pengzhan, Zhuang Zichao, Application of PFTTH in Smart Grid . International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, pp.389-392,Feb13-16, 2011. [11] CAI Wan-sheng, TANG Hui, ZHANG Jun, ZHANG Hao. Communication Network of Power Distribution Automation System Based on EPON. Telecommunications for Electric Power System , No218, vol.31, pp.11-15, Dec 2010.

[9]

[12] XU Guangnian,MA Xinxiang, PAN Kefei, Q IAN Fengqiang. Design and applica tion of d istr ibution network commun ication system ba sed on EPON. Telecommunications for Electric Power System , No187, vo29, pp.59-62, May 2008. [13] Zhao Feng, Liu Jianming, Zhang Yuexia Study on Power Mobile Multimedia System . International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, pp.339-343,Feb13-16,2011. [14] Zhang Yu, Yin Haohui, Zhang Jiamou. Objective measurement of picture quality in multimedia communications. Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, No4, vol22, pp.39-44,1992.

1678