Smart meter packet transmission via the control signal at dynamic load on eNode-B in LTE networks

Abstract

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is an attractive infrastructure for Smart Grid (SG) networks because it provides high bandwidth and low latency over a large coverage area. Although LTE networks are primary designed for Human-to-Human (H2H) communication, SG networks primarily involve Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. One such SG network component is the Smart Meter (SM), which utilizes M2M communications to report power consumption to a centralized control center at periodic intervals. As defined by the LTE standard, all User Equipment (UE), including SMs, need to make a connection to transmit a packet. That means, UEs need a scheduling and resource blocks (RBs). In this paper, we introduce SM packet transmission via LTE control signaling in order to conserve resources at the eNode-B such as physical channels, scheduling and RBs. Heavy and medium load are compared to investigate packet loss at the eNode-B. With our proposed mechanism, results show that SM packets can be sent via a control signal with no scheduling or RB usage required at the eNode-B. Simulation results show that usage of the Physical Uplink Share CHannel (PUSCH), Physical Downlink Control CHannel (PDCCH), and Physical Downlink Share CHannel (PDSCH) are reduced by 2%. In addition, packets loss during heavy load at the eNode-B is decreased by 15% when compared with the LTE standard.