Performance of MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks in harsh smart Grid environment

With the recent advances in embedded systems and wireless communication technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained great attention to realize efficient and low cost control systems for smart grid. The existing applications of WSNs on smart grid include advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), equipment fault diagnostics, outage detection, conductor temperature and dynamic thermal rating, power fraud detection, towers and poles monitoring. However, recent field tests show that low-power wireless links in smart grid environments have variable link qualities and high packet error rates because of RF interference, fading effects, equipment noise, and obstructions in smart grid environments. Hence, the realization of WSN-based smart grid applications is directly related to the performance of WSN communication protocols in harsh smart grid environments. In this paper, the performance of the state-of-the-art WSN medium access control (MAC) protocols, such as IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.11, CSMA, TDMA, and Z-MAC, has been evaluated to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of evaluated MAC protocols in harsh smart grid spectrum environments. Overall, the main goal of this paper is to quantify the impact of the smart grid propagation environment characteristics on the performance of evaluated MAC protocols in terms of network throughput, packet reception rate, and energy consumption.