Master Thesis Proposal
SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS OF WIRELESS MESH NETWORK IN ADVANCED
METERING INFRASTRUCTURE
PHILIP HUYNH
1. COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND SIGNATURES
Approved by
Date
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Advisor: Dr. EDWARD CHOW
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Committee member: Dr. JUGAL KALITA
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Committee member: Dr. RORY LEWIS
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2. INTRODUCTION
MOTIVATIONS
GROWING THE NEED FOR SMART GRID
A smart grid [1] delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital
communication technology. Smart grid allows controlling appliances at consumer’s homes
to save energy, and reduce cost. The operation status of the smart grids can be monitored
in real time, so the smart grids are more reliable. Many governments are promoting such a
modernized electricity network as a way of addressing energy independence, global
warming and emergency resilience issues.
Utilities can archive energy efficiency and maintain the competitive of services by taking
advantages of the smart grid and its market benefits. The smart grid solutions that utilize
the information technology for data collection, monitoring and control, data analysis and
information communication infrastructure, will cost-effectively protect revenues today,
while laying the foundations for future services.
ADVANCED METERING INFRASTRUCTURE (AMI)
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) [2] that is as part of larger Smart Grid initiatives, is
implemented by government agencies and utilities to meet the above challenges.
Extending from the current Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) technology, AMI provides two
way meter communications, and allows commands to be sent toward the home for multi
purposes, including Time-of-Use pricing information, demand-response actions, or remote
service disconnects.
The Department of Energy estimates that over 280 Giga-watts of new generating capacity
will be needed by 2025 [5]. It results in new power plants would be built in the future. The
energy industry is facing the critical issues such as the need for new plants, maintaining
overburdened infrastructure, coping with an aging workforce, complying with regulations,
and environmental concerns. For a long time, the energy industry has rightfully focused on
the supply side of this challenge. But now, the demand side of the equation can be
significantly impacted by the existing of the wireless mesh networking [3]. Wireless mesh
networking can use as the backbone of the AMI solutions to enable two-way intelligent
networked communications with smart meters. With the AMI, the value added services
such as demand response and demand side management would be enabled, besides meter
reading. AMI solutions allows interoperable networks and systems across the entire power
structure aid in the management and control of energy consumption, improve operations
management, conserve the environment, and adhere to evolving regulations.
WIRELESS MESH NETWORK AS AN OPTION FOR THE AMI’S COMMUNICATION NETWORK
A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) [3, 4] is a communications network made up of radio
nodes organized in a mesh topology. Wireless mesh networks often consist of mesh clients,
mesh routers and gateways. The mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones and other
wireless devices while the mesh routers forward traffic to and from the gateways which
may but need not connect to the Internet. A mesh network is reliable and offers
redundancy. When one node can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still
communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate nodes.
Wireless mesh networks can be implemented with various wireless technology including
802.11 [12], 802.15 [13], 802.16 [14], cellular technologies or combinations of more than
one type.
When the WMN technology is applied in AMI solutions, it can bring new components to
the electrical grids, such as self-managing and self-healing mesh networking, intelligent
meters, and bridging to Home Area Networks (HAN) [2] for connectivity with energy
consuming appliances. The real time communication between the smart meters and the
utility’s data center provides detailed usage data while also receives and display Time-ofUse (TOU) pricing information, and offers other on-demand abilities such as remote
connect or disconnect, unrestricted monitoring and control, etc. Customers are able to
access the usage data for tailoring consumption and minimizing energy expenses while
helping balance overall network demand.
When WMNs are used in the AMI, they can provide the following features [5]:
 Low cost of management and maintenance - WMNs are self-organizing and require
no manual address/route/channel assignments. It is simple to manage thousands or
millions of devices resulting in the lowest total cost of ownership.
 Increased reliability – The WMN routing mechanisms provide the redundant paths
between the sender and receiver of the wireless connection. Communication
reliability is significantly increased because of the eliminations of single point failures
and potential bottleneck links. Network robustness against potential problems, e.g.,


node failures and path failures due to RF interferences or obstacles, can also be
ensured by the existence of multiple possible alternative routes.
Scalability, flexibility and lower costs - WMNs are self-organizing and allow true
scalability. Nodes and Gateways are easily added at a very low cost with:
o No limitation on number of hops
o No network address configuration
o No managed hierarchical architecture
o No hard limitation on number of Nodes per Gateway
Robust security – WMNs have the security standards that allows all communications
in AMI are protected by mutual device authentication and derived per-session keys
using high bit rate AES encryption. This hardened security approach allows for
authentication as well as confidentiality and integrity protection in each
communication exchange between every pair of network devices – Smart meters,
Relays, or Wireless Gateways.
PROBLEM STATEMENTS
The advantages of the WMNs
Beside the above advantages, the WMNs are more reliable and scalable than other
wireless topologies such as Point-To-Point or Point-To-Multi Point.
Some AMI application and its network performance requirements
 Meter Data Collection application: allow High end-to-end Latency
 Outage Notification application: requires Low end-to-end Latency
The challenge questions for WMN as a solution for AMI’s Communication Network
 Given an AMI application, such as Meter Data Collector, How can we calculate the
Round Trip Time of the messages in the Multi hops routing manner, or the End-toEnd Delay of the WMN communication network?
 Most of AMI applications need the large coverage of the WMN for the wide area
deployment, what is the maximum number of hops on the routing path that can be
extended while the End-to-end network performance is still qualified for the
applications?
This thesis will find the answers for these challenge questions by using the network
simulation.
GOALS
The thesis will focus on the simulation and analysis of WMN in term of Scalability,
Performance and Security, which are the important requirements for the design of the
AMI’s communication network [1, 2].
The simulation results will be analyzed for understanding the capacity and scalability of the
WMN, as well as the trade-off between these two properties. The balance between the
capacity and scalability is an important design issue because more coverage area the
network is, less cost the deployment process will be. However more coverage area also
means to less bandwidth.
APPROACH
This thesis presents the potential benefits of WMNs in terms of Scalability, Capacity and
Security properties.
Suggest a Hybrid WMN architecture for the AMI’s communication network
The communication network of AMI should be a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) [6] to
coverage a wide area such as a city, or town. We suggest a network model that uses the
Hybrid WMN architecture [4].
When the coverage area increases to serve more wireless clients and to lower the total
infrastructure cost, the multi-hop wireless networking suffers from the scalability issue [4].
The scalability and performance of Hybrid WMN have been analyzed and discussed in [79]. The scalability issue is also addressed from a network deployment perspective. Two
scalable WMN deployment strategies for the dense-urban and wide-area scenarios were
proposed in [10].
In the simulation, we use the WiMAX technology [14] for the backhaul network and the
Wi-Fi technology [12] for the local networks to build the MAN model [6].
The security issue of the WMN was categorized and discussed in [3, 20]. Some network
security mechanisms such as Virtual Private Network (VPN), Authentication and
Authorization, and Key management are discussed in [6].
Propose a simulation scenario
We propose an AMI application scenario for researching on the given network model. With
the simulation scenario, we need to research the performance of the communication
network. And because of the scalability issue, we also need to experience the trade-off
between the performance and scalability properties of the network.
To simulate the network traffic of AMI’s Meter Reading Collection process, we build an
AMI application called SmartGridSim that run on top of the Networking (or Internet) Layer
[11]. SmartGridSim simulates the process of exchanging data between the AMI’s Meter
Reading Collector and the Smart Meters through the communication network.
Simulate and analyze the results
Then, we simulate the proposed network scenario with a set of pre-defined parameters
such as number of hops, client nodes, and distance between mesh routers, bandwidth. The
simulation results are analyzed to understand the network performance, and the trade-off
between the scalability and the performance properties under different values of predefined parameters of network model.
CONTRIBUTION
The thesis provides a network model of WMN that is implemented in a Network Simulation
platform. The network model can help the researchers, network designers archiving the
WMN experiments from the simulation. Developing AMI applications can employ the
network model as a Communication Network for simulation purposes.
We also discuss the trade-off between the Scalability and Performance properties. The
Security of the proposed network model will be discussed. Therefore, this thesis serves as a
baseline for the network designer or decision makers for the AMI Communication
Network.
3. THESIS PLAN
3.1 TASKS
3.1.1 Work flow
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------RESEARCH STEPS
BASELINES
TIME
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Research Smart Grid – AMI
AMI Knowledge
Fall-2009
Research WMN
Wireless Mesh
Network Knowledge
Fall-2009
Propose the AMI’s
Communication Network
architecture: Hybrid WMN
(WiMAX, Wi-Fi)
Simulation Scenario
Simulate Integrated WMN
in AMI context
Simulation Results
Spring-2010
Conclusions
Simulation Based
Network
Performance Analysis
Spring-2010
SmartGridSim AMI
Application
Trade-off between
network scalability
and network
performance
Spring-2010
3.1.2 Already Complete
• Research Smart Grid, and AMI
• Research Wireless Mesh Networks
• Research network simulator software: NS-2 [16] and NCTUns 6.0 [17-19].
3.1.3. In Progress
• Propose the AMI’s communication network model: uses Hybrid WMN architecture.
The backhaul network uses WiMAX [14]. The local mesh network uses Wi-Fi [12].
Scenario: The Hybrid Wireless Mesh Network as a Communication Network for AMI.
The AMI has three components that are Meter Reading Collector, Wireless Mesh (WM)
Communication Network, and Wi-Fi (WF) Smart Meter.
The Meter Reading Collector component accesses the WF Smart Meter’s reading via the WM
Communication Network.
Wi-Fi Smart Meter
WM Communication
Network
Meter Reading
Collector
Basically, the WM Communication Network component provides the data transportation
services. The requests and responses from Meter Reading Collector component and Wi-Fi Smart
Meter component respectively will be delivered by the calling to transportation services of WM
Communication Network component.
The WM Communication Network component has three layers of network services like the first
three layers of the OSI model [11]:
Networking Layer
(Internet Protocol: w/
multi-hop routing)
Data Link Layer
Physical Layer
The WM Communication Network is a Hybrid Wireless Mesh Network (WMN), which uses Wi-Fi
for local networks and WiMAX for backhaul networks [4, 6]. The WM Communication Network
has the WiMAX Base Station, the WiMAX/Wi-Fi Gateway, and Wi-Fi Dual Band Mesh Routers.
(More detailed information about the functionality of these components can be found in the
included documents)
The above Design has been implemented in the NCTUns 6.0 network simulation software [1719]. The background picture is a portion of the Colorado Springs city map which has been
extracted from the Google map. The distance between the WiMAX base station and the
Subscriber Station (WiMAX/Wi-Fi Gateway) is about 600m. The distance between two Wi-Fi
Dual Band Routers in the same cluster is 200m.
3.1.4. Future
• Develop and implement SmartGridSim application, a network application that will
simulate the process of data transmission between the Meter Reading Collector
(MRC) and the Smart Meters (SM). As a part of the simulation scenario, the
SmartGridSim will run on top of the NCTUns Network simulation, so that we can
record and analysis the performance of the communication network.
SmartGridSim has two programs. One runs at the Meter Reading Collector, and
called Communication Server (CS). Other one runs at the Smart Meter and called
Communication Terminal (CT). The traffic pattern is the requests that are issued
from the CS to CT.
For example, the usage scenario of the SmartGridSim is as following:
•
•
•
1. Communication Server (CS) is started with the arguments such as “IP address of
the target Smart Meter”, “Number of times to read”, “Number of bytes to read”
2. Communication Terminal (CT) is started with arguments such as “Number of bytes
to send”.
3. As the end of the running, the output from the programs will be such as the
following:
 Output by the CS:
o Total of time spent to collect data from the meters
o Total number of times data request successful
o Total number of times data request failed
o Average/Minimum/Maximum time spent to collect data per meter
 Output by the CT:
o Total number of times data response
Simulate the network scenario with different values of parameters such as number
of hops, client nodes (or Smart meters), wireless link bandwidth, distance between
mesh routers.
Analyze the simulation results:
o Evaluate the network performance measures such as throughput, delay
o Trade-off between scalability and performance
Write the thesis report
3.2 DELIVERABLES
• The SmartGridSim AMI application that simulates the process of Meter Reading
Collection. The application runs on top of the NCTUns 6.0 network simulation for
helping the analyzing of network performance and scalability.
• The thesis report documents the technologies of wireless mesh networks, the
proposed network architecture, the network model, the simulation scenario, and
various pre-defined simulation parameters such as simulation area, radio models,
number of hops, distances between mesh routers, number of client nodes, MAC
protocols, routing protocols. We discuss about the trade-off between the network
scalability and performance properties, as well as the security property of the
proposed network model.
REFERENCES
[1] “Smart Grid”, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid>
[2] “Advanced Metering infrastructure”, National Energy Technology Laboratory white paper,
February 2008.
[3] Prasant Mohapatra, “Wireless Mesh Networks”, Department of Computer Science
University of California, Davis.
[4] I. F. Akyildiz, X. Wang, and W. Wang, "Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey," Computer
Networks Journal (Elsevier), vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 445-487, Mar. 2005.
[5] Srini Krishnamurthy, “Smart AMI Network Solutions Enable the Smart Grid”,
ElectricEnergyOnline.com,
<http://www.electricenergyonline.com/?page=show_article&mag=55&article=395>
[6] “Understanding Wi-Fi and WiMAX as Metro-Access Solutions”, Intel Corporation white
paper, 2004.
[7] B. Liu, Z. Liu, and D. Towsley, "On the capacity of hybrid wireless networks", in Proceedings
of IEEE INFOCOM, Mar. 2003, vol. 2, pp. 1543-1552.
[8] S. Zhao and D. Raychaudhuri, "On the Scalability of Hierarchical Hybrid Wireless Networks,
Proceedings of the Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2006), March
2006, pp. 711-716.
[9] S. Zhao, I. Seskar and D. Raychaudhuri, "Performance and Scalability of Self-Organizing
Hierarchical Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks," Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications
and Networking Conference (WCNC'04), Atlanta, GA. March 2004, pp. 132-137.
[10] J. –H. Huang, L. -C. Wang, C. -J. Chang, “Wireless Mesh Network: Architecture and
Protocols”, chapter title “Architectures and Deployment Strategies for Wireless Mesh
Networks”, Springer 2008.
[11] “OSI Model”, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model>
[12] IEEE Standard 802 Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer
(PHY) Specifications, 2007.
[13] IEEE Standard 802 Part 15.1: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer
(PHY) Specifications for Personal Area Networks (WPANs), 2005.
[14] IEEE Standard 802 Part 16: Air Interface for Broadband Wireless Access Systems, 2009.
[15] WiMAX community, <http://www.wimax.com>
[16] The Network Simulator Ns-2, <http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/>
[17] NCTUns 6.0 Network Simulator and Emulator, <http://nsl.csie.nctu.edu.tw/nctuns.html>
[18] “The Protocol Developer Manual for the NCTUns 6.0”, Network and System Laboratory,
Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan 2010.
[19] S.M. Huang, Y.C. Sung, S.Y. Wang, and Y.B. Lin, “NCTUns Simulation Tool for WiMAX
Modeling,” Third Annual International Wireless Internet Conference, October 22 – 24,
2007, Austin, Texas, USA. (EI and ISI indexed, sponsored by ICST, ACM, and EURASIP)
[20] N.B. Salem and J.-P. Hubaux, "Securing Wireless Mesh Networks," Wireless Comm., vol. 13,
no. 2, 2006, pp. 50–55.