Design and Implementation of MAC Protocol for SmartGrid HAN Environment
Min Seok Kim, Sung‐Ryul Kim, Jeonghyun Kim, Younghwan Yoo · 2011
Recent environmental changes have shown the world the importance of sustainable development and these changes demand concrete solutions. The Smart Grid solution is recognized as a key technology to cope with these challenges, not just concerning the environmental impact of greenhouse gases but also regarding the increasing electric demand. Smart Grid is a combination of two networks, the first being the electrical transmission and distribution network, while the other is the modern data communication network. The Smart Grid communication network can be divided into three parts, HAN (Home Area Network), NAN (Neighborhood Area Network), and WAN (Wide Area Network). IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols, which are based on the CSMA/CA mechanism, are assumed to be the candidates for the MAC layer of HAN. However, it has latency and energy efficiency problems. In this paper, we have redesigned a tree based TDMA MAC protocol which can be applied in Smart Grid HAN. From the experiments, we verify the performance of our proposed protocol with respect to the network latency, high packet transmission rate and energy efficiency.