Robust Wireless Sensor Networks for Transmission Line Monitoring in Taiwan

Abstract

Based on topological and geometrical data of an actual national power grid, this paper first presents the statistical characteristics of a transmission line monitoring wireless sensor network (WSN). We have discovered that the length of a transmission line follows a Weibull distribution. The number of towers in a transmission line has a Negative Binomial distribution, and the distance between two adjacent towers is Gamma distributed. Using this topology information, we further study the robustness of a WSN for transmission line monitoring. Compared to controlling node degree, we have found that robustness can be better achieved by providing multiple node-disjoint paths between a communication node and the control center. We have developed an algorithm to find the minimum communication range in achieving a desired robustness. Through extensive numerical results, we have confirmed that it is possible to guarantee robustness against a single node failure as long as we can provide a communication range of at least 1.09 km.