Experiencing Low Power Wireless Links in Distribution Smart Grid Environments

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been recognized as a promising communication technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, smart grid applications rely on WSNs for enabling pervasive monitoring and control of the electric grid. However, these applications are commonly deployed in harsh environments that adversely impact the reliability of low-power wireless links in WSNs. Efficient link quality estimation has been shown as a prerequisite to overcome link unreliability. Several WSN Link Quality Estimators (LQEs) have been proposed in the literature. However, there is a lack of real world experimentations that investigate their adequacy to assess low-power links in smart grid environments. To fill this gap, this paper presents a thorough experimental study of representative LQEs in a smart grid distribution substation. Both single and composite LQEs are evaluated in terms of reliability, stability and reactivity, by analyzing their statistical behavior. This study would help system designers choose the most appropriate estimators for smart grid environments. Especially, it shows that composite LQEs, such as Opt-FLQE, F-LQE, and four-bit, are more reliable than single LQEs, including PRR, WMEWMA, and RNP. Further, experimental results show that Opt-FLQE is found to be the most reliable estimator, F-LQE, PRR, and WMEWMA are the most stable estimators, while Opt-FLQE, RNP, and four-bit are the most reactive LQEs.