Ideas and benefits of education and
collaboration for more efficient smart grid
communications
Dr. Nabih Jaber
Objective
Lawrence Technological University
Education
New Smart
Grid Courses
Research &
Development
Collaboration
ISWiNLab
DTE
Grants
LTU STEM
Scholarship
Program
Prototyping
Seed
Grants
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Education for the Smart Grid
• Helps improve the smart grid prospects by:
– Improving skills of existing and future designers
– Provides future workforce with valuable skills and
knowledge
• Education and collaboration:
– Bring together strongly motivated people for the purpose of
reducing misconceptions
– Encourage communication of ideas
– Help transition from theory to practice
– Increase opportunities for improvement in design and
learning
• All for the benefit of our society
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Education for the Smart Grid
• LTU STEM Scholarship Program
– Enables students to complete BS in EE with power
engineering concentration
• Smart Grid courses
– Started in Spring 2013
– More courses next year
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Research and Development
• R&D helps to:
– Research and analyze problems, and design
solutions
– Justify and find optimal/efficient solutions
– Prevent costly mistakes for different scenarios and
applications
– Improve existing protocols if found to be
necessary for optimizing the smart grid
communication system
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ISWiNLab Facilitation
• Mentorship of students engaged in related
project/design competitions:
– Team Management
• Hope to encourage (R&D):
– Learning of fundamentals of smart wireless
networking technologies and systems
– Hands-on design and excellent learning experiences
– Production of working systems that can be marketed
– Industry experience and collaboration
– Multi-disciplinary team work
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Fundamental Student Learning
Includes:
• Research skills
• Critical thinking
• Problem solving
• Analytical modeling
– Mathematics! Mathematics! Mathematics!
• Writing skills
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Fundamental Student Learning
Also includes:
• The learning of communication system
protocols
– Application
– Transport
– Routing
– MAC
– Physical
• Security to protect against cyber attacks
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Fundamental Student Learning
Should also facilitate improved experience with
• Programming (examples)
– Development environments
• Eclipse
• Visual Studio
• MATLAB
– Languages
•
•
•
•
•
Java
Python
MATLAB
C++
C#
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Fundamental Student Learning
• Simulating and debugging
– LabView
– Simulink
– NS3
• Prototyping and debugging
– Hardware and software
– Operating systems: Linux for example
• Project management
• Giving and receiving proper feedback
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Collaborative Learning Benefits
• Include problem solving enhancement
• Encourages sharing and evaluation of each
other’s ideas
• Inspires and motivates one another’s learning
• Facilitates more efficient/effective mentoring
between highly motivated faculty and students
• Encourages inter-disciplinary team work
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Learning of Technical Information
• Improves working knowledge of existing
technologies
• Critical thinking of which technologies are
best suited for which application
• Helps in making engineering design and
optimization choices
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Hands on Experience (R&D)
• Hands on experience for the students:
– Such as class/lab experience, should expose them
to job-like projects or environment
– Encourages further learning and/or specialization
– Exposes to real-world problems
• Improves critical thinking and problem solving skills
– In conclusion: helps improve their proficiency and
better train them for the workforce
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Smart Grid Conceptual Model: The
Seven Domains
Markets
Bulk
Generation
Operations
Transmission
Service
Provider
Distribution
Customer
Communication Interface
Electrical Interface
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Role of Communication
Infrastructures [2]
Control Centre (Operations)
Communication Core Network
S
S
A
HAN
SM
A
HAN
SM
S
NAN
S
DAU
R
S
MDMS
S
S
S
R
A
DAU
S HAN
SM
NAN
WAN
Customer Premises Distribution Network Transmission Network
Generation
Last Mile Connection
AMI
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Interoperability Issues: OSI stack
Type-Technical [2]
OSI-7 Layers
Application Presentation Transport
GWAC Stack
Syntactic
Interoperability:
Understanding f data
structure in messages
exchanged between
systems, eg HTML,
XML
Common Interoperabilities
Session
Network
Network
Interoperability:
Exchange messages
between systems
across a variety of
networks, eg TCP, UDP
IPV6
Data Link
Physical
Basic Connectivity:
Mechanism to
establish physical and
logical connections of
systems, eg Ethernet,
Wi-Fi
Shared Meaning of Content; Resource Identification; Plug & Play; Time Synchronization
& Sequencing; QoS; Security & Privacy; Scalability
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Example Communication Protocols
• Medium access control (MAC) protocols
– Used to control when to access the medium
• Network/Routing protocols
– Control where messages are sent to in a network
• Transport protocols
– Quality control and application connectivity
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MAC Protocols
For example wireless sensor networking
protocols:
• Have traditionally been designed using energy
efficient protocols:
– ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4)
– Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1)
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MAC Protocols
However:
• These protocols are designed with relaxed
throughput and latency requirements [2]
• Smart grid imposes stringent requirements for
latency, throughput, fairness [2]
– Resulting in investigations of new MAC protocols
for WSNs
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Medium Access Scheme
(MAC) Challenges
Hidden
Station
MAC
Challenges
Exposed
Station
Static
Mobile
False
Blocking
Reliability
QoS
Guarantees
Delay
Priority
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MAC
A
B
RTS
RTS
CTS
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C
D
CTS
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MAC Protocols in WSNs [2]
Contentionbased protocols
Collision-free
protocols
S-MAC
DS-MAC
MS-MAC
Sift
Wiser-MAC
TRAMA
SMACS
CFS-TDMA
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Hybrid
Protocols
Spatial-TDMA/CSMA-PS
Z-MAC
D-MAC
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Comparison of WSN
MAC Protocols [2]
Category
Protocol
Access
protocol
Contention
based
S-MAC
DS-MAC
MS-MAC
Sift
Wiser-MAC
CSMA
CSMA
CSMA
CSMA/CA
CSMA
Synchron- Adaptivity
ization
Good
Good
Good
Good
Good
Collision- TRAMA
free
SMACS
CF-TDMA
MMAC
TDMA
TDMA
TDMA
TDMA
X
X
X
X
Good
Good
Weak
Good
Hybrid
TDMA/CSMA
TDMA/CSMA
TDMA/Sloted
Aloha
X
X
X
Good
Good
Weak
Spatial-TDMA/CSMA-PS
Z-MAC
D-MAC
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Mobility
support
X
X
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WSN MAC Protocols
for Smart Grid [2]
• Transmission-line monitoring
– Nodes organized in chains can use TDMA-like scheduling
– Contention-based protocols also work due to multihop data
delivery
• Substation automation
– Contention based or hybrid MAC protocols are preferred
due to adaptability under dynamic network conditions and
scalability
• Power distribution network-monitoring
– Two types of traffic: operational and emergency data which
can be supported best with a hybrid or custom protocol
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Medium Access Control Protocols
Busy Tone
Asynchronous
Carrier Sensing:
CSMA/CA
MAC Protocols
Synchronous
Antenna based
(Directional)
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IEEE 802.11p
TDMA/ALOHA
Smart Grid (SPR, SFR, POC,
PCCW, EPCCW and ePCCW)
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Synchronous p-Persistent
Repetition (SPR) [5]
current timeslot
time
Frame End/Start
Frame End/Start
Random Decision function
Transmit
Don’t Transmit
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Synchronous Fixed
Repetition (SFR) [5]
time
𝐿
𝑟
Frame End/Start
Frame End/Start
Random Decision function
Transmit
Don’t Transmit
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Positive Orthogonal Codes (POC) [6]
time
𝐿
𝑥𝑖 𝑦𝑖 ≤ 𝜆
𝑖= 𝑖 1
Frame End/Start
Frame End/Start
Random Decision function
Transmit
Don’t Transmit
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Performance Results
Probability of Success at load p=1
Probability of Success
1
POC @ =0.03
POC hidden nodes @  = 0.03
POC @ =0.06
POC hidden nodes @  = 0.06
POC @ =0.1
POC hidden nodes @  = 0.1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
2
3
4
5
6
Repetitions (r)
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8
9
10
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Performance Results
Delay at load p=1
Delay (time slots)
200
POC @ =0.03
POC hidden nodes @  = 0.03
POC @ =0.06
POC hidden nodes @  = 0.06
POC @ =0.1
POC hidden nodes @  = 0.1
150
100
50
0
2
3
4
5
6
Repetitions (r)
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8
9
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30
3 New MAC Protocols
Solving the hidden
stations problem
Passive Cooperative
Collision Warning
(PCCW)
Passively warns of
potential collisions,
and shares medium
fairly
Enhance PCCW
(EPCCW)
Increases data rate
and decreases
collisions
Emergency PCCW
(ePCCW)
QoS considerations
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MAC protocol II:
Enhanced-PCCW (EPCCW)
Errors
increase
Modulation
Scheme
BPSK
Code Rate
1/2
Data Rate
(Mbps)
3
BPSK
3/4
4.5
QPSK
1/2
6
QPSK
3/4
9
16QAM
1/2
12
16QAM
3/4
18
64QAM
2/3
24
64QAM
3/4
27
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Data rate
increases
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MAC protocol II: EPCCW
0
10
-1
10
BER
Data Rate
(Mbps)
3
4.5
6
9
12
18
24
27
-2
10
DSRC , BPSK 3Mbps
DSRC, QPSK 6Mbps
DSRC, QPSK 9Mbps
DSRC, 16QAM 12Mbps
DSRC, 64QAM 27Mbps
-3
10
-4
10
0
5
10
15
SNR (dB)
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25
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MAC protocol III: ePCCW
• ePCCW protocol differentiates between
emergency and non-emergency messages
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Proposed 3 MAC Protocols:
18 analytical formulations
Passive
Cooperative
Collision Warning
(PCCW)
SPR
• Probability of
Success (PrS)
• Delay
SFR
• PrS
• Delay
POC
• PrS
• Delay
Enhance PCCW
(EPCCW)
Emergency PCCW
(ePCCW)
SPR
SPR
• Probability of
Success (PrS)
• Delay
• Probability of
Success (PrS)
• Delay
SFR
SFR
• PrS
• Delay
• PrS
• Delay
POC
POC
• PrS
• Delay
• PrS
• Delay
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Physical Layer (PHY) Simulator Design [1]
G
A
A
B
F
C
C
D
E
G
A: Main Model Settings
B: Transmitter/Receiver Settings
C: Channel Settings
D: Simulation Controller Settings
E: Output/Visual Settings
F: Modulation/Decoding Settings
G: Simulation Initialization, and
State Settings
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Physical Layer (PHY) Simulator Design [1]
Transmitter
Specifications
Shared
specifications
Channel
Specifications
Receiver
Specifications
GUI Level
Simulation Level
Receiver Bank
Tx1
Ch1
Rx1
...
TxN
Ch2
...
ChN
Rx2
...
Output
Tx2
CH Buffer
Channel
TX Buffer
Transmitter
RxN
Nabih Jaber, Kemal Tepe, Esam Abdel-Raheem, "Reconfigurable simulator using graphical user interface (GUI) and
object-oriented design for OFDM systems," International Journal of Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory (SIMPAT),
Elsevier, 2011. doi: 10.1016/j.aeue.2011.03.001.
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MAC/PHY Simulator Design
Simulation Control
OFDM PHY
MAC
Environment Model
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Probability of Success
ePCCW
Success, 33 users with load=1.0, L=150 over 1000 frames
1
0.95
Probability of Success
0.9
PCCW
0.85
38 %
0.8
30 %
0.75
SFR Analytic
SFR Simulation
PCCW Analytic
PCCW Simulation
Proposed ePCCW Analytic
Proposed ePCCW Simulation
0.7
0.65
Repetition Protocol
0.6
0.55
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Repetitions (r)
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10
11
12
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Average Delay
Average Delay, 33 users with load=1.0, L=150 over 1000 frames
80
Repetition Protocol
70
15
Delay (Time Slots)
60
50
PCCW
40
55
30
SFR Analytic
SFR Simulation
PCCW Analytic
PCCW Simulation
Proposed ePCCW Analytic
Proposed ePCCW Simulation
20
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
ePCCW
6
7
Repetition (r)
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9
10
11
12
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Routing Protocols [2]
Flat Routing
Hierarchical
Routing
Location-Based
Routing
SPIN
DD
LEACH
GAF
RPL
TEEN
GEAR
DADR
HPAR
SPAN
Hydro
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Simulating, testing, and feedback
• When the students have learned the technical
details of a communication system, they can
test it theoretically and through simulation
• This provides them with meaningful feedback
and gives them metrics they can use for
making optimization and design decisions
• This is especially important for the future
smart grid with potential for rapid adaptations
in supply and demand for improving efficiency
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Prototyping Importance
• From the Smart Grid Collaborative Report to
the Michigan Public Service Commission [7]:
– “The Collaborative work group recognized that
smart grid is not just one technology or one
application. It is a myriad of different options and
equipment that must be considered together and
separately.”
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Prototyping Importance
• Can be used in many cases:
– Testing sophisticated algorithms
– Testing in-house energy management systems
– Trialing consumer facing applications for
educating them
– Test different wireless communication
technologies
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Collaboration and New Training Projects
• SmartHEMS or Smart Home Energy
Management System development, which:
– Transitioning between current and future HEMS
• Test-bed to test different wireless
communication technologies, such as:
– Cellular networks
– WiMAX
– ZigBee
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Seed Grant LTU: Prototyping [3]
Line Sensor
Power distribution lines
Sensor node
Mesh Network node
Line Sensor
ZigBee
WLAN
Sensor node
ZigBee
Line Sensor
Gateway node
ZigBee
Sensor node
Control center
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Student exposure with real problems
Example Problem HEMS:
“It is difficult to motivate people to change their energy usage
habits”
Steps:
• Introduce students to some of the concepts of energy
management
• Facilitate students to brainstorm possible solutions
• Test potential theoretical effects of proposed solutions
• Iterate as necessary until satisfied
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Importance of Detailed Development
• Why such detailed system development for
future engineers?
– Only when the students are faced with designing
details of a system can they begin to appreciate
how complex a system actually is
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Student’s Role in the Design Process
• The designer should be able to imagine the
system from each actor’s use case
• For complex systems, this can be facilitated by
a combination of:
– Critical thinking and learning
– Mentoring and collaboration
– Interdisciplinary team work
– Surveys, feedback, and testing
– Learning and communicating
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Concluding Remarks
• Smart grid is an important topic for our future
• LTU recognizes the importance of facilitating
the training of a well qualified engineering
workforce for Michigan:
– Mentoring
– Collaboration
– Critical thinking
– Industry partnership
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Concluding Remarks
• For the smart grid our future engineers require
– Robust technical knowledge and theoretical
concepts
– Communication, and research skills
– Team work, development, and design abilities
– Meaningful hands on and industry related
experience
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• Questions?
• Ideas?
• Feedback?
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References
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
[1] Nabih Jaber, Kemal Tepe, Esam Abdel-Raheem, "Reconfigurable simulator using
graphical user interface (GUI) and object-oriented design for OFDM systems," International
Journal of Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory (SIMPAT), Elsevier, 2011. doi:
10.1016/j.aeue.2011.03.001.
[2] E.H., Z.H. & H.P., “Smart Grid Communications and Networking,” Cambridge University
Press, 2012.
[3] Patrick Casey, Nabih Jaber, Kemal Tepe, "Design and Implementation of a Cross-Platform
Sensor Network for Smart Grid Transmission Line Monitoring," IEEE SmartGridComm
International Symposium on Communication networks for Smart Grid, 2011.
[4] Nabih Jaber, William Cassidy, Esam Abdel-Raheem, Kemal Tepe, "Vehicular Broadcast
Messaging Reliability Enhancement Protocol for Emergency Vehicle Communication,"
IEEE/IFIP International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security (NMTS),
2012.
[5] Qing Xu; Mak, T.; Jeff Ko; Sengupta, R.; , "Medium Access Control Protocol Design for
Vehicle–Vehicle Safety Messages," Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on , vol.56, no.2,
pp.499-518, March 2007.
[6] Farnoud, F.; Valaee, S., "Reliable Broadcast of Safety Messages in Vehicular Ad Hoc
Networks," INFOCOM 2009, IEEE , vol., no., pp.226,234, 19-25 April 2009
doi: 10.1109/INFCOM.2009.5061925.
[7] MPSC Smart Grid report, “The Smart Grid Collaborative Report To The Michigan Public
Service Commission,” December 2011.
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References
•
[8] A. El Baba, S. A. Ruppert, Nabih Jaber, Kemal Tepe, "AODV Adaptation for Semi-Static
Smart Grid Monitoring Systems," International Conference on Smart Grid
Engineering (SGE’12) August, 2012.
•
•
•
•
•
[9] Leichtman Research Group, "Nearly 90% of U.S. computer households subscribe to
broadband," [http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/090412release.html]
[10] http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/estimating-appliance-and-home-electronic-energyu9e
[11] http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/over-twenty-percent-of-u-s-adults-dont-use-theinternet/
[12] Gellings, Clark W. "Power to the People." Power and Energy Magazine, IEEE 9.5 (2011):
52-63.
[13] IBM smartgrid ideas [http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smart_grid/ideas/]
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