Towards a Distributed Congestion Control mechanism for Smart Grid Neighborhood Area Networks

The need for significant improvements in the management and efficient use of electrical energy has led to the evolution from the traditional electrical infrastructures towards modern Smart Grid networks. Taking into account the critical importance of this type of networks, multiple research groups focus their work on issues related to the generation, transport and consumption of electrical energy. One of the key research points is the data communication network associated with the electricity transport infrastructure, and specifically the network that interconnects the devices in consumers' homes, the so-called Neighborhood Area Networks (NANs). In this paper, a new distributed congestion control mechanism is proposed, implemented and evaluated for NANs. Besides, different priorities have been considered for the traffic flows transmitted by different applications. The main goal is to provide with the needed Quality of Service (QoS) to all traffic flows, especially in high traffic load situations. The proposal is evaluated in the context of a wireless ad hoc network made up by a set of smart meter devices, using the Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol and the IEEE 802.11ac physical layer standard. The application of the proposed congestion control mechanism, together with the necessary modifications made to the AODV protocol, lead to performance improvements in terms of packet delivery ratio, network throughput and transit time, fairness between different traffic sources and QoS provision.