Cost-efficient QoS-Aware Data Acquisition Point Placement for Advanced Metering Infrastructure

TL;DR

This paper presents a cost-effective, QoS-aware heuristic method for optimal placement of data acquisition points in advanced metering infrastructure, improving smart grid data collection efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel greedy heuristic algorithm for DAP placement in AMIs, considering QoS requirements and leveraging IEEE 802.15.4g standards, with validation on realistic topologies.

Findings

The heuristic algorithm performs comparably to IBM CPLEX in small scenarios.

It effectively determines minimal DAP numbers and locations for large-scale AMIs.

The approach enhances data collection reliability and cost-efficiency in smart grids.

Abstract

In an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), data acquisition points (DAPs) are responsible for collecting traffic from several smart meters and automated devices and transmitting them to the utility control center. Although the problem of optimized data collector placement has already been addressed for wireless broadband and sensor networks, DAP placement is quite a new research area for AMIs. In this paper, we investigate the minimum required number of DAPs and their optimized locations on top of the existing utility poles in a distribution grid such that smart grid quality of service requirements can best be provided. In order to solve the problem for large-scale AMIs, we devise a novel heuristic algorithm using a greedy approach for identifying potential pole locations for DAP placement and the Dijkstra shortest path algorithm for constructing reliable routes. We employ the characteristics of medium access schemes from the IEEE 802.15.4g smart utility network (SUN) standard, and consider mission-critical and non-critical smart grid traffic. The performance and time-complexity of our algorithm are compared with those obtained by the IBM CPLEX software for small scenarios. Finally, we apply our devised DAP placement algorithm to examples of realistic smart grid AMI topologies.