MAC Layer Performance Optimization Research For Smart Grid Wireless Networks

The process of the grid intelligentizing can optimize the resource allocation, alleviateresource and environmental pressure, and achieve the sustainable development. With thedevelopment of economy, The traditional power grid has highlighted a series of problems, suchas poor transmission flexibility and coordination control ability, as well as self-healing restoringcapacity and information sharing mechanism. The development of a new intelligent power gridhas become the consensus of all countries. Communication systems, as the basis of intelligentpower grid, to a great extent, determine the success or failure of the power network operation. Itis also the key point and difficulty of power grid constructions. However, the existing researchresults on the intelligent power grid focus on the basic concepts and the system structure ofnetwork/node, not further researching about the network performance improvement strategy. Inthe aspects of protocols, the network layer protocols are discussed frequently, but there are fewabout MAC layer protocols. From the view of MAC and based on the analysis of the Markovprocess model, this paper will present the corresponding minimum contention windowoptimization strategy from Ad Hoc network and ZigBee network.The main contents and the innovation points are as follows:1) The existing communication technologies all generally support the applications of smartgrid. This paper will have a review of the main communication technologies for SG. It willintroduce the technical characteristics, the application areas, and the research situations of eachtechnology. Find the meeting point of smart grid and wireless networks which is helpful to thefollowing research..2) Combined with linear topological structure of the transmission lines, it will discuss thefeasibility of using Ad Hoc network, then based on the analysis of IEEE802.11Markov process,an optimization strategy of minimum contention window will be deduced. By this strategy, nodesunder different competitive environments can be set with the optimal competition windowrespectively. The simulation results show that the system throughput can be improved obviously,and system delay will become much better.3) Based on the analysis of the time slot CSMA/CA of IEEE802.15.4MAC protocol inZigBee network, used the Markov chain model and Combined with the characteristics of thewireless nodes in the smart grid, it will present the improvement principle and method of theoptimal contention window, and the results will be verified by simulations. The simulation results show that the system throughput can be improved obviously.