Energy Harvesting Cognitive Radio Networking for IoT-enabled Smart Grid

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides connectivity to the objects that monitor and sense the environment to integrate physical world with digital world. If IoT is enabled in the Smart Grid (SG), it can benefit from advantages of the IoT such as interoperability, connectivity, etc. By combining the IoT with energy harvesting (EH) and cognitive radio (CR) techniques, the problems of SG, such as harsh channel conditions and limited battery power, may be resolved. Hence, incorporation of EH and CR reveals a new networking paradigm for IoT-enabled SG. To this end, we first introduce CR usage in the IoT-enabled SG, and explain the advantages and challenges of CRs. Furthermore, we propose EH approaches for the resource constraint of wireless devices in the IoT-enabled SG. Operation and node architecture of energy harvesting cognitive radios (EH-CR), and network architecture of the IoT-enabled SG are described to explain details of our networking paradigm. Open issues and future research directions are discussed to enable this new paradigm.