Smart Grid Communications

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Electric utilities are faced with an evolving set of challenges to maintain and improve services. Rising global demands, depletion of primary energy resources, environmental concerns such as carbon emissions, diversified generation, charging of electric vehicles, and reliability are some of the issues that call for profound changes in the electrical grid. Smart grid (SG) has the promise to address these challenges and dramatically improve performance and efficiency. It uses two-way communications to provide utilities with remote access and control of the grid components, and allow real-time sensing and measurement. Pervasive communications will allow utilities to incorporate consumers and distributed energy resources into the decision process to efficiently balance supply and demand. Wireless technologies will play a key role in these advances as they must support data transfer and information exchange throughout the power grid. Despite the tremendous potential with SG wireless networks, there are major challenges to their successful deployment.The goal of this research program is to address existing and future challenges of wireless communications networks in a SG context. The focus will be on coverage and connectivity, capacity planning and resource allocation, security and privacy, heterogeneity and interoperability, coexistence and interference mitigation as well as availability and reliability. The following key enabling technologies for SG communications networks will be examined: 1) network and channel coding strategies; 2) dynamic spectrum management; 3) innovative cooperative relay techniques; 4) radio resource management; 5) privacy for grid users and data security; and 6) interference mitigation techniques. The proposed research will develop, evaluate, and demonstrate novel solutions for SG wireless networks to enhance electric power generation, distribution, and consumption. The resulting technical innovations will enhance and advance the deployment of SG wireless communications networks, and will have a significant impact on the evolving SG. The proposed research program will provide significant economic benefits to Canada, and train professionals for the Canadian high technology industry.