Abstract
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted significant attention in the past decade and have found a variety of applications in environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and human health condition monitoring, among others. Furthermore, WSNs are expected to lie at the heart of the next-generation electric power grid, known as the smart grid. A smart grid can be characterized by its cyber-physical nature, which integrates communication, computation, and control capabilities to intelligently operate the power grid. A smart grid can be viewed in two ways: from the perspective of energy transmission and from the perspective of information transmission. In the latter, the smart grid can be viewed as a distributed sensor network, gathering information from suppliers and consumers. From an information transmission point of view, the smart grid integrates important sensing capabilities that can be enabled through WSNs. These include distributed data collection within a large scale networking environment as well as accurate and robust sensing infrastructures (e.g., advanced metering infrastructures). WSNs can also allow end users of power to participate in grid regulation through real-time power pricing.
New application-oriented challenges have emerged within the context of the smart grid. The strong interconnection between the smart grid and WSNs has drawn significant attention from research communities. This special issue aims to gather contributions that combine concepts from WSNs and the smart grid in both theory and engineering applications. In response to the call for papers, 15 papers were submitted from various academic and research institutions. After careful review by experts in the relevant areas, 5 papers were accepted. The papers cover a range of relevant topics including routing protocols, electric vehicle (EV) charging algorithms, and sensor validation methods. The paper “A genetic QoS-aware routing protocol for the smart electricity networks” presents a genetic algorithm (GA) based on demand routing protocol for smart grid networks that effectively reduces network latency. The paper “Ant-based swarm algorithm for charging coordination of electric vehicles” develops a charging load model for EVs and proposes a charging management structure, based on swarm intelligence. The paper “An online multidomain validation method for wireless sensor nodes” proposes an online validation method for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of WSN data. The paper “Energy, traffic load and link quality aware ad-hoc routing protocol for wireless sensor network based smart metering infrastructure” presents a novel WSN ad-hoc routing protocol for reliable and energy efficient communication for smart metering nodes. Finally, the paper “Communication challenges in the smart grid applications: an overview” outlines a number of key issues associated with communication and information management that must be addressed before the full benefit of the smart grid can be achieved.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The guest editors would like to thank all the authors who have submitted their papers to this special issue. Special gratitude also goes to all the reviewers for their time and effort.