LTE Radio Resource Management for Real-Time Smart Meter Reading in the Smart Grid

In this paper, the real-time reading of smart meter information in dense deployments of smart meters is investigated. Specifically, the paper aims to answer the question of whether long term evolution (LTE) and/or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks are able to support automatic meter reading (AMR) in advanced metering infrastructures (AMI) without overloading the cellular base stations (BSs). Therefore, different radio resource management techniques are analyzed and compared under realistic simulation assumptions. The Simulation results show that LTE can accommodate a significantly large number of smart meters in a limited coverage area, transmitting their measurement data in real-time. However, this comes at the price of dynamic radio resource management, which would require an extensive exchange of signaling information. To address this problem, methods for reducing the signaling load between the meters and base stations are discussed.