1. Simulation And Analysis Of Wireless Mesh Network In Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
Dear Dr. Chow, Dr. Kalita, and Dr. Lewis
I would like to talk about the proposal for my master thesis.
Its title is “Simulation and Analysis of Wireless Mesh Network in Advanced Metering Infrastructure”.
Master’s Thesis Proposal
Philip Huynh

2. Colorado Springs AMI Communication Network8
800
The picture shows us the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in Colorado Springs.
What is AMI?
Smart Grid/AMI is a fully configured infrastructure that must be integrated into the existing and new utility processes and applications.
This infrastructure includes
Home Network Systems: communicating thermostats and other in-home controls, smart meters
Communication Networks from Smart Meters to Local Data Concentrators
Backhaul Communication Networks to Corporate Data Centers
Meter Data Management Systems (MDMS)
Data integration into existing and new software application platforms
At the bottom, on left, it is he specifications for AMI meter data collection app.
Meter Data Collection Process
The wireless network works on the low data transmission rate frequency of MHz)
Transmission interval for Electric (every 5 minutes), Gas (every 15 minutes) and Water (Every 15 minutes)
It is not a real-time data collection process.
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3. Motivations
Reduce power plant fuel usage by accurate load prediction with real-time meter data
Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) can be a major component in the wireless network infrastructure for collecting meter data.
IEEE WiMAX standard
Longer distance 50km (100m for n)
Bigger bandwidth 70Mbps (45Mbps for n)
Low cost
What is the Motivations of the thesis?
This thesis is about the applying of WMN technologies to AMI for meter data collection in real-time.
So, what are the benefits of real-time data?
The real time meter data is much more accurate then the longer time frame data, for example 5 minute, or 1 hour data point.
Electricity generation plants can use the meter data to plan how much power they need to generate at any time.
The real time data help them accurately predicting the load. Therefore, utilities can save the fuel used to generate the electric power, especially at the low load time.
When WMN is employed to the AMI communication network solutions, it has many advantages compared to other communication technologies.
Increased Reliability: there are redundant routing paths between the sender and receiver.
Scalability, and low Cost: the network coverage area can be extended by adding more routers to existing WMN without the need for new gateway, and backhaul network devices.
Robust security: There are security standards for WMN.
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4. Goals
Develop tools and techniques for planning the WiMAX + Wi-Fi network for real-time meter data collection application.
Focus on performance and scalability of the WMN properties
The utilities don’t have the tools that assist them in the planning of Wireless Infrastructure Network of AMI.
We focus on the Performance and Scalability properties because they are effect to the important requirements of real time AMI applications, such as large coverage and high performance infrastructure network.
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5. Challenges in Design and Deployment of WMN for AMI
Can the WMN meet the network performance requirements for real-time meter data collection?
Are the network topologies of WMN scalable?
The WMN contributes many advantages to the AMI Communication Network solution.
But there are challenge questions in designing and deployment of WMN.
Real-time meter data collection requires the Meter Data Messages transmitted to the Data center in 1 second.
The large number of SMs will need a high bandwidth network to meet a such network performance requirement.
AMI Meter data collection application needs to deploy on a large area.
For the optimization in designing, the trade-off between the scalability and performance of the WMN should be know.
This thesis will answer these challenge questions by using simulation method.
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6. Approach
Develop a hybrid Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) with WiMAX and Wi-Fi for AMI.
Simulate the meter data reporting process in such a hybrid MAN.
Analyze the simulation results
Meet the real time requirement?
Investigate the scalability issue
For the simulation, we will develop a Hybrid WMN model for AMI.
We are interested in the Hybrid architecture because it is high scalable, and performance. These properties are very important because AMI meter data collection needs to coverage the metropolitan area.
The simulation also needs a network traffic generator that simulates the real time meter data collection process.
The network throughput (the numbers of message in 1 second ) will be derived from the simulation results to see whether the communication network can transport the message in real time.
The WMN model is also investigated about the trade-off between the scalability and the performance that can help the optimization in design.
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7. Tasks Already Complete
Developed a network model with hybrid WMN for AMI.
Studied the NS-3 and NCTUns 6.0 for simulating the network model with a large number nodes.
In Progress: Intent to complete in Spring Semester
Develop a simulator for designing and evaluating the hybrid WMN with the meter reporting process
Future: Intent to complete in Spring Semester
Analyze the simulation results
Write the thesis report
The completed tasks are:
Research the AMI, WMN/Hybrid WMN, network simulator SW NS-2, NCTUns 6.0
Develop Network model, a methodology for the simulation of WMN w/ large number of wireless nodes (100,000 nodes), and the AMI meter data collection application
The picture show us the proposed Network Model using WiMAX, and Wi-Fi technology.
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8. Deliverables
A working simulator for the designing and deploying of hybrid WMNs for AMI.
The master thesis report.
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9. References
[1] “Smart Grid”, <
[2] Edward Chow, “Secure Smart Grids”, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 2009.
[3] “Advanced Metering infrastructure”, National Energy Technology Laboratory white paper, February 2008.
[4] Prasant Mohapatra, “Wireless Mesh Networks”, Department of Computer Science University of California, Davis.
[5] I. F. Akyildiz, X. Wang, and W. Wang, "Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey," Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier), vol. 47, no. 4, pp , Mar
[6] Srini Krishnamurthy, “Smart AMI Network Solutions Enable the Smart Grid”, ElectricEnergyOnline.com, <
[7] “Understanding Wi-Fi and WiMAX as Metro-Access Solutions”, Intel Corporation white paper,
[8] B. Liu, Z. Liu, and D. Towsley, "On the capacity of hybrid wireless networks", in Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, Mar. 2003, vol. 2, pp
[9] S. Zhao and D. Raychaudhuri, "On the Scalability of Hierarchical Hybrid Wireless Networks, Proceedings of the Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS 2006), March 2006, pp
[10] S. Zhao, I. Seskar and D. Raychaudhuri, "Performance and Scalability of Self-Organizing Hierarchical Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks," Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC'04), Atlanta, GA. March 2004, pp
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10. References cont.
[11] J. –H. Huang, L. -C. Wang, C. -J. Chang, “Wireless Mesh Network: Architecture and Protocols”, chapter title “Architectures and Deployment Strategies for Wireless Mesh Networks”, Springer
[12] “OSI Model”, <
[13] IEEE Standard 802 Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, 2007.
[14] IEEE Standard 802 Part 15.1: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications for Personal Area Networks (WPANs), 2005.
[15] IEEE Standard 802 Part 16: Air Interface for Broadband Wireless Access Systems, 2009.
[16] WiMAX community, <
[17] The Network Simulator Ns-2, <
[18] NCTUns 6.0 Network Simulator and Emulator, <
[19] “The Protocol Developer Manual for the NCTUns 6.0”, Network and System Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan 2010.
[20] S.M. Huang, Y.C. Sung, S.Y. Wang, and Y.B. Lin, “NCTUns Simulation Tool for WiMAX Modeling,” Third Annual International Wireless Internet Conference, October 22 – 24, 2007, Austin, Texas, USA. (EI and ISI indexed, sponsored by ICST, ACM, and EURASIP)
[21] N.B. Salem and J.-P. Hubaux, "Securing Wireless Mesh Networks," Wireless Comm., vol. 13, no. 2, 2006, pp. 50–55.
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11. Tasks cont.
Figure 1: AMI’s Communication Network Model using Wi-Fi, and WiMAX
Figure 2: MeterReportingSim Application
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12. Tasks cont.
Figure 3: Network Model is implemented with Network Simulator NCTUns 6.0
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