Performance and Power Consumption Analysis of IEEE802.11ah for Smart Grid

Abstract

IEEE802.11ah is a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) designed for the application of Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M), mainly used in sensor network, smart metering, car network, health care, and other emerging fields. IEEE802.11ah inherits the IEEE802.11n ac technology. At present, smart grid has completed the installation of optical fiber communication as its backbone network; WLAN can be used to build new wireless sensor network for smart grid by improving the transmission distance, speed, and power efficiency. The critical features of 802.11ah make it a powerful candidate for WLAN in smart grid, such as intelligent substation sensor network and automatic metering system (AMS). This paper simulates the new added highly robust 1MHz bandwidth and Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS) 10 in the 802.11ah physical layer and analyzes the coverage range and energy-saving performance of 802.11ah based on the simulation results. The analysis shows that the 802.11ah at 1 MHZ MCS 10 mode can obtain 2.5-3 dB gain. Combined with advantages of Sub-1GHz working frequency, 802.11ah could enlarge the coverage range by five times, compared to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. On the other side, 802.11ah module used in the smart grid can greatly reduce power consumption, especially in the AMS with a 1.1 kW.H power savings per year. 802.11ah not only provides the flexibility and low cost features of wireless communication, but also brings coverage and energy-saving performance improvements, which leads to good economic benefit.