Constrained Broadcast With Minimized Latency in Neighborhood Area Networks of Smart Grid

Neighborhood area networks (NANs) are essential communication infrastructure in smart grid. They support communications for various applications including time-critical ones. A typical NAN communication scenario is to send commands from a control center simultaneously to a large number of nodes, demanding low-latency broadcast communications. This is challenging due to the limited bandwidth and large number of nodes in wireless NANs. While some broadcast schemes, e.g., opportunistic flooding, have been developed for general wireless sensor networks, they are not optimized for smart grid NANs with unique characteristics and low-latency requirements for time-critical applications. Therefore, a constrained broadcast scheme with minimized latency (CBS-ML) is presented in this paper for low-latency NAN communications. To avoid traffic congestion, it constrains the broadcast to a small number of core nodes. Theoretical developments are presented to show how to select core nodes based on network topology and link reliability. Simulations are conducted to demonstrate the proposed CBS-ML.