Abstract

LTE network is a good choice for delivering smart grid demand response (DR) traffic. However, LTE connectivity is not pervasively available due to smart meter improper positioning, limited of coverage, or base station software or hardware failures. In this paper, a solution is introduced to overcome issues relating to lack of LTE base station connectivity for user equipment (UE) considered as remote terminal units, i.e. communication interfaces connected to smart meters. The solution is an ad hoc mode for the LTE-Advanced UE. The ad hoc mode is applied to reach a relay node that is the nearest UE with base station connection. DR traffic is delivered between clusters of UEs and a relay node using multi-hop communications. Analytical Markov chain models and a Riverbed Modeler network simulation model are implemented to illustrate the functionalities and the performance when DR traffic is delivered with varying transmission power levels. A detailed physical layer propagation model for device-to-device communications, a static resource allocation in time domain, hybrid automatic repeat request retransmissions, and a capability for a UE to receive uplink transmissions are modeled both analytically and in the simulator. Both the disjoint analysis and simulations show that all packets are successfully transmitted at most with the fourth transmission attempt and the average network delay is low enough to support most of the smart grid DR applications (139.2–546.6 ms).