Improvements in AODV towards Smart Grid Routing - Test Bed Development & Prioritized Routing for Emergency Scenarios
Abstract
The Smart Grid project is a global effort towards a reliable and robust power grid. With estimated funding in the billions in just the next few years, this project will be an on-going multi-disciplinary feature of engineering. Designated as one of the subsections of the Smart Grid effort is power line monitoring or transmission line monitoring. For a reliable power grid power lines, transformers, and other field equipment must be monitored. Wireless mesh networks have already began to deploy in different sectors and is a viable strategy for power line monitoring. They can be easily deployed with sensors and can create data paths to monitoring stations on their own. Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) is a routing protocol that has received much attention over the years and has been chosen as a basis for alteration for moving towards a more intelligent smart grid routing protocol. Wireless mesh networking protocols have generally been simulated in nearly all the research, live testing is tedious and requires hardware and test schedules. These problems are solved with the developed Java Ad-Hoc Network Test Bed which will allow even novice users to complete rudimentary network tests on live systems. Emergencies in the field such as transmission line faults and/or transformers misbehaving need to get information to hydro companies as quick as possible. A quality of Service prioritized emergency route solves the problems of network congestion during an emergency. When a sensor detects that a power line has gone down, it will request a specialized higher speed route to the control end, therefore resulting in a lower latency and assurance of quick emergency data delivery.