A spectrum sharing based metering infrastructure for smart grid utilizing LTE and WiFi

Abstract

In advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) of smart grid, WiFi is an appropriate choice for its bidirectional communication requirement to transmit data to the billing center. But, WiFi functions in the free spectrum bands and LTE also requires to use the same free bands for its network expansion being licensed spectrum is limited and expansive. LTE and WiFi can operate simultaneously in the 3.5 GHz band (also known as citizen broadband radio service (CBRS)), which has large amount of free and clean spectrum. In this paper, we propose a smart grid metering infrastructure based on fixed duty cycled LTE and WiFi, where smart meters and its’ data collectors (known as Access Point) use WiFi and LTE, respectively, for transferring data. Under a system level simulation environment, we investigated the LTE-WiFi coexistence performance in CBRS band considering a time division duplexing (TDD)-LTE associated with FTP traffic, and IEEE 802.11n (WiFi). The simulation performance demonstrates a good neighborhood coexistence between WiFi and LTE, which makes it a potential communication solution for the AMI.