Deploying unlicensed wireless technologies for the smart grid: The co-existence issue

This study catalogs the various wireless communication technologies for the smart grid, irrespective of where they are positioned in the grid, (i.e. WAN, NAN or HAN) into two distinct categories; depending upon their frequency band requirement for unlicensed or licensed operation. The licenses are regulated and can significantly contribute to the considerable delays in returns of investment and the relatively higher total cost of ownership. A cheaper and more flexible alternate is to employ wireless communication technologies that operate in the unlicensed frequency band. Experimental work has been carried to analyze the degree of degradation in performance of these unlicensed technologies in a coexisting environment. The performance metric user are the average of the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) in dBm and the Packets Error Rate (PER), which is a sum of lost packets and the packet received not ok (NACKs). The study concludes at the possibility of improving these performance metrics by proposing the use intelligent radios (Cognitive Radios).