On the self-healing mechanism in smart grid networks

This paper proposes a self-healing wireless network mechanism to provide efficient servicing in Smart Grid network. The nature of Smart Grid environment requires high level of wireless networking reliability and stability for providing accurate power related information to users. To provide these requirements in the wireless networking perspective, the proposed self-healing mechanism uses automated services to acquire various wireless environment parameters and use them to adapt and tune the network. Parameters such as MAC retransmission count, Bit Error Ratio (BER), and Received Signal Strength (RSS) are used and modified to detect various types of problems in the network. Then based on these detections, the network adaptively enforces its transmission policies to heal from these problems. Our self-healing mechanism eventually helps in increasing packet delivery and real-time properties of the wireless network, providing higher reliability for smart grid services. We evaluate the performance of our mechanism via NS-3 simulator and show that our mechanism can enhance the reliability of the smart grid network via efficient self-healing methods.