Distributed cooperative spectrum sensing with wireless sensor network cluster architecture for smart grid communications

Smart grid (SG) is widely considered as the next generation power grid. Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have shown its advantages for SG by achieving low-power transmissions. However, SG communication technologies are subjects to ineffective spectrum allocation issues. Cognitive radio wireless sensor network (CRWSN) has been identified as a new technique for SG to face these challenges. CRWSN is a new research paradigm where WSN and cognitive radio are combined. In this paper, WSN with cluster tree topology is proposed as a compatible choice for SG design. We introduce CRWSN into SG using cluster tree topology to improve the sensing performance and solve the rarity of spectrum by opening the underused licensed bands to secondary users. We adopt cluster distributed cooperative sensing as a method of spectrum sensing. We later evaluate the performance of this method under two distributed policies; OR and AND rules based on energy detection.