R E C E N T A D VA N C E S I N W I R E L E S S T E C H N O L O G I E S F O R S M A RT G R I D

SURESENSE: SUSTAINABLE WIRELESS RECHARGEABLE SENSOR NETWORKS FOR THE SMART GRID
MELIKE EROL-KANTARCI AND HUSSEIN T. MOUFTAH, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA
Transmission system

ABSTRACT
The electrical power grid has recently been embracing the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for the sake of improving efficiency, safety, reliability and sustainability of electrical services. For a reliable smart grid, accurate, robust monitoring and diagnosis tools are essential. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are promising candidates for monitoring the smart grid, given their capability to cover large geographic regions at low-cost. On the other hand, limited battery lifetime of the conventional WSNs may create a performance bottleneck for the long-lasting smart grid monitoring tasks, especially considering that the sensor nodes may be deployed in hard to reach, harsh environments. In this context, recent advances in Radio Frequency (RF)-based wireless energy transfer can increase sustainability of WSNs and make them operationally ready for smart grid monitoring missions. RF-based wireless energy transfer uses Electromagnetic (EM) waves and it operates in the same medium as the data communication protocols. In order to achieve timely and efficient charging of the sensor nodes, we propose the Sustainable wireless Rechargeable Sensor network (SuReSense). SuReSense employs mobile chargers that charge multiple sensors from several landmark locations. We propose an optimization model to select the minimum number of landmarks according to the locations and energy replenishment requirements of the sensors.

Transmissio tower Step up ansformer

For a reliable smart grid, accurate, robust monitoring and diagnosis tools are essential. Wireless Sensor Networks are promising candidates for monitoring the smart grid, given their capability to cover large geographic regions at low-cost.

INTRODUCTION
Electrical power grid is one of the largest and the most complex man-made systems. The general principles of power generation and delivery have been determined more than a century ago and incremental updates have taken place as new renewable energy generation techniques and power electronic devices have become available. A major upgrade in the power grid has recently been possible with the advances in

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The next-generation power grid empowered by ICT is known as the smart grid. Smart grid is anticipated to employ various communication technologies such as powerline, satellite, fiber optic, cellular, mesh and shortrange wireless communications depending on the location of the assets and the specific needs of the applications. Among those technologies, short-range wireless communications are promising for smart grid monitoring and diagnosis tasks when compared with the available wired sensors and limited telemetry provided with Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) of the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. In the past, traditional measurement tools proved to be inadequate in several severe grid conditions. For instance, the actual reason of the major blackout of 2003, in the eastern U.S. interconnection was later determined to be a tree contacting the power lines in Ohio during peak demand, whereas at the time of the incident, operators were not able to figure out the reason of the abnormal fluctuations in the frequency and act accordingly [1]. If robust monitoring tools had existed, this blackout may have been avoided or at least, the outage could have been kept in a local region by isolating the faulty lines before they caused the cascaded blackouts. Similar incidents emphasize that the absence of adequate situational monitoring tools may cause large-scale interruption of electrical services. Consequently this implies the timeliness of robust smart grid monitoring and diagnosis tools. WSNs have gained wide recognition as established monitoring tools and they are being used in a wide variety of fields including defense and health that require high-confidence solutions. Smart grid can also take advantage from this low-cost technology to cover large geographical regions with high redundancy [2, 3]. However, before WSNs are deployed in the smart grid, several challenges need to be addressed. Two major challenges of WSNs have been the low data rate communications and limited lifetime of

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Transmission system

Transmission tower Step up transformer Renewable energy Feeder 1 Feeder 2 Commercial consumer loads

Distribution substation

Residential consumer loads Power plant SuReSense Industrial consumer

Figure 1. Illustration of a smart grid with a distribution system employing the SuReSense. the sensor nodes. Advanced data compression and in-network aggregation techniques, and alternative wireless communication technologies such as the low-power Wi-Fi offer promising solutions for the former problem [4]. For solving the limited battery issue of the WSNs, energyefficient protocols have been widely studied in the literature where duty-cycling and various energy-efficient medium access and routing protocols have been proposed. Moreover, by harvesting energy from the ambient resources, it has been possible to extend the lifetime of the sensor nodes. However duty-cycling and energy-efficient protocols are still only able to provide limited lifetime while energy-harvesting is generally uncontrolled and may not be possible at every circumstance due to unavailability of ambient energy. For instance, in the smart grid, WSNs deployed at the overhead transmission lines can harvest solar energy or vibrationinduced energy but when WSNs are deployed for indoor substation monitoring or underground vault or power line monitoring, it may not be straightforward to harvest energy from the ambient resources. For this reason, the recent advances in the RF-based wireless energy transfer technology position wireless rechargeable sensor network as a strong candidate for monitoring the smart grid [5]. Figure 1 presents an illustration of a wireless rechargeable sensor network inside a distribution substation of the smart grid. In this article, we propose a Sustainable wireless Rechargeable Sensor network (SuReSense) for smart grid monitoring. SuReSense targets long-term, reliable monitoring of the smart grid assets and it relies on Mobile wIreless Charger RObots (MICRO) for replenishing the batteries of the sensor nodes. At the first step, minimum number of landmarks are selected according to the locations and energy replenishment requirements of the sensors by the help of an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation. At the second step, landmarks are organized into clusters where each cluster is serviced by one MICRO. MICROs visit the assigned landmarks in its cluster by following the shortest Hamiltonian cycle and disseminate wireless power to multiple sensors from the determined locations. This sustainable wireless charging scheme reduces the path length of the MICROs, allows for a longer docking time enabling the charger to top up its own battery and further reduces the waiting time of the sensors. The rest of the article is organized as follows. We summarize power grid monitoring and diagnosis tools, along with the studies that utilize WSNs for smart grid monitoring. We briefly survey the studies that use wireless charging technology in WSNs. We present the SuReSense scheme which is a long-lasting smart grid monitoring tool, and we discuss the advantages of SuReSense by the help of illustrative results. We conclude the article and provide future research directions.

SMART GRID MONITORING AND DIAGNOSIS

Adopting the WSN technology for smart grid monitoring has been recently considered in several studies [2, 3, 6]. In [2], the authors focus on the wireless link quality of a WSN that is employed in the power systems. The authors implement field tests in various locations, one of

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Rc Landmark

the availability of ambient energy. Furthermore, coupling energy harvesting rate to energy consumption of a sensor node can be significantly challenging for a sensor network with high data traffic intensity. The smart grid infrastructure will cover a large region including outdoors, indoors and underground. Certain regions may be rich in ambient energy, such as overhead power lines, while at some locations WSNs may not have the chance to scavenge energy at all. Therefore, in this article, we consider utilizing the recently emerging RF-based wireless energy transfer technology for a sustainable WSN. In the next section, we briefly survey the research on wireless energy transfer and its applications in wireless rechargeable sensor networks.

WIRELESS ENERGY TRANSFER FOR WSNS

Micro

Figure 2. SuReSense for distribution substation monitoring. them being a 500-kV substation, and present link quality measurements from an IEEE 802.15.4-based sensor network. In [6], the authors implement a WSN-based monitoring tool for a test substation in Kentucky, and show that WSNs are able collect data from the substation using a dynamic link quality based routing algorithm. The implemented WSN has been utilized for collecting data from circuit breakers and transformers in addition to ambient temperature and gas density measurements. In [3], the authors explore the opportunities that become available with multimedia sensor networks and actor networks in the smart grid. The authors anticipate that WSN technology will find diverse application areas including power plants, renewable energy generation sites, overhead transmission lines, transmission towers, distribution transformers, feeder lines and finally consumer premises. One such application of WSN technology at the consumer premises has been presented in [7]. An IEEE 802.15.4based WSN has been employed as a part of an energy management application that helps reducing the electricity expenses of the consumers by utilizing the Time of Use (ToU) information as well as enabling efficient use of renewable energy that is supplied from the rooftop solar panels. Besides the advantages of WSNs, limited lifetime of the sensor nodes emerges as a significant performance bottleneck that may delay the adoption of the WSNs in the long-lasting smart grid monitoring tasks. In fact, extending the lifetime of a WSN is a widely studied topic. Yet, the solutions in this field rely on duty-cycling and energy-efficient communication protocols that can only extend the lifetime of a WSN up to few years. For long-term operation, energy-harvesting have been considered in the literature, where coupling duty cycling with the slow energy-harvesting process has led to promising results as reported in [8]. Yet, energy-harvesting relies on

Energy transfer from one device to another over several meters using electromagnetic (EM) waves is known as RF-based wireless charging. A wireless charging testbed using Powercast Co. [5] wireless power chargers have been presented in a recent study [9]. The authors have proposed a charging-aware routing protocol and an optimization framework in order to determine optimal charging and transmission cycles in a WSN. Since wireless charging may utilize the same Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band with the data communications, concurrent charging and data transmission may corrupt data packets. The authors have modified the existing Ad Hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol to include an additional metric that represents the charging duration. In this protocol, the path with minimum charging duration is selected as the forwarding path. The transmission and charging durations of the nodes that are on the forwarding path are later determined with an optimization framework. Utilizing a mobile charging vehicle for supplying energy for the WSN has been considered in [10]. The authors assume that the mobile vehicle visits each and every sensor node for replenishing sensor batteries. The batteries are charged such that the minimum available energy is higher than a threshold within one cycle of charging. Shi et al. prove that the optimal traveling path for the vehicle is the shortest Hamiltonian cycle when the objective is maximizing the ratio of the docking time over cycle time. In [11], although the authors consider a different wireless charging technology, i.e. energy transmission via magnetic resonance, they propose combining the mobile charging ability with data collection. The mobile charger is called SenCar and it houses a high-capacity rechargeable battery, a DC/AC converter and a resonant coil. SenCar visits a subset of sensor nodes which require urgent recharge, and in the meanwhile it collects data from the sensor network. In another recent work [12], the authors study recharging of the RFID tags by the RFID readers using wireless energy transfer. The authors first consider stationary readers (chargers) and try to minimize the number of chargers in the network. Then, they assume that the tags

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are mobile and they can receive power from different readers as they move, and the problem turns into selecting reader locations that provide adequate charging for the tags along their path. In this article, following the promising results of recent wireless energy transfer studies, we propose the SuReSense which utilizes wireless charging to address the need of long-term smart grid monitoring tasks.

1: {Input: V (Set of sensor nodes), Rc (RF-based charging range)} 2: {Output: (Set of landmarks), (Set of clusters of landmarks), i (Path of mobile charger i)} 3: = SelectLandmarks(V, Rc) 4: = ClusterLandmarks() 5: for all ci do 6: i = SelectShortestPath(ci) 7: end for

SUSTAINABLE WIRELESS RECHARGEABLE SENSOR NETWORK (SURESENSE) FOR SMART GRID MONITORING
SuReSense can be employed in various assets of the smart grid. In this article, we focus on distribution substation monitoring. A distribution substation includes a large number of equipment in a condensed environment. Accurate monitoring of those equipment can yield to early detection of possible failures and aid in energy management decisions. As a sustainable monitoring solution, wireless rechargeable sensor network technology is promising for the substations. However, given the remote locations and hazardous operation environments of the substations, wireless charging cannot be done by human operators. To facilitate wireless charging by devices, a straightforward approach would be mounting stationary chargers at certain locations but this approach would require a large number of chargers due to the limited range of wireless charging; hence increase the deployment cost of the WSN. For this reason, we employ Mobile wIreless Charger RObots (MICROs) to supply wireless power to the sensor nodes based on their energy replenishment requirements. During charging process, MICROs park and emit radio signals which have different frequencies than the signals that are used for communication. In the literature, the frequency band around 900MHz is utilized for wireless charging of the WSNs whereas sensors communicate in the 2.4Gz band [9]. MICROs wait until all of the sensor nodes within the communication range receive adequate power. This duration is denoted by h and a MICRO moves when it receives acknowledgement from the sensors indicating that they have finished charging. Naturally, wireless energy transfer is limited to a certain range, R c , since the radio waves attenuate as they travel from the transmitter to the receiver. According to the free space model, the received power is inversely proportional to d2 and it is assumed to be 0 when d > Rc, where d denotes the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. For simplicity, we adopt a circular disk model for wireless power propagation [12]. In Fig. 2, we present the SuReSense deployed in a rectangular field where the sensor nodes are replenished by four MICROs. The star illustrates one of the landmark locations and a MICRO is shown to wirelessly charge the sensor nodes in its charging range while the other MICROs are illustrated to be in their docking stations. SuReSense employs two steps to minimize the number of the landmarks and the total length of the traversed path:

Algorithm 1. SuReSense algorithm. Landmark selection Clustering and path formation These steps are presented in Algorithm 1 and explained in detail in the following subsections.

STEP I: LANDMARK SELECTION

Landmark selection is formulated with an ILP model whose objective is to minimize the number of landmarks in order to serve as many as possible sensor nodes from one location. The objective function of the ILP model is given in Eq. 1 where l xy is a binary variable that is 1 if there is a landmark located at (x, y) and 0 otherwise. minimize l xy
x y

(1)

We assume that sensor nodes receive power from one and only one charger. This constraint is formulated by:
i = 1, M xy x y

(2)

i is a binary variable which is 1 if the where M xy sensor i is able to receive power from the landmark located at (x, y) and 0 otherwise. Sxy is the number of sensors charged by the landmark with i . S should the coordinates (x, y), and Sxy = SiMxy xy satisfy Sxy > 0. In a WSN, most of the energy is consumed during packet transmission. Hence the frequency of forwarding events to the sink and relaying the packets of the neighbors, determine the amount of energy required for topping up the battery of a sensor node in each charging cycle. Demand intensity refers to the energy replenishment requirement of a sensor node and it depends whether the sensor is located on a busy path towards the sink or not. In the ILP formulation, we denote the demand intensity with Di. The energy supply of a MICRO is limited by its battery capacity which is denoted by t . The total supply of the MICROs should be greater than or equal to the energy requirement of the sensors. This constraint is formulated by Eq. 3. The rest of the ILP formulation involving the boundary constraints is not given since the key components have been defined above.

i i , M xy i

x, y

(3)

The landmarks that are selected by the above ILP formulation are further processed in the clustering and path formation step.

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STEP II: CLUSTERING AND PATH FORMATION

In this step, landmarks are grouped based on their proximity to the docking stations of the MICROs and each MICRO is assigned one cluster of landmarks. Sensors around the landmark locations receive power from the MICRO that is in charge of their cluster. Since each MICRO operates in a smaller region that is close to its docking station, the length of the traversed path reduces. Furthermore, sensor nodes wait less for energy replenishment in comparison to the case when a single MICRO visits all of the nodes or

the landmarks. To further reduce the path length, optimum cycle to cover all of the vertices of the cluster, i.e. landmarks and the docking station, needs to be determined. For this purpose, MICROs follow the shortest Hamiltonian cycle which gives the optimum path length [10].

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF SURESENSE

SuReSense consists of 50 sensor nodes randomly deployed in a rectangular field of 100m X 100m. Four MICROs are employed for wirelessly charging the sensor nodes and their docking stations are assumed to be at the corners of the rectangular filed. We use CPLEX to determine the landmark locations by solving the ILP formulation defined in the previous section. The demand intensity of a sensor node, i.e. the amount of the battery that needs to be charged, varies depending on several factors as explained in the previous sections. We assume that the demand intensity of the nodes vary between 1kJ and 4kJ. The battery capacity of the MICROs is assumed to be 20kJ. The energy demand of the sensor nodes are forwarded to a sink node and the sink node runs the ILP to determine the landmarks, clusters and paths among the landmarks. In the first set of simulations, we set the wireless energy transfer range to Rc = 2m. In Fig. 3, we present a sensor network topology with 50 nodes and 18 landmark locations. After the landmarks are clustered and the Hamiltonian cycle is computed, one of the MICROs, as shown in the upper right side of the figure, visits the assigned landmarks and returns back to its docking station to replenish its battery from mains. Note that, only one of the MICROs and the associated Hamiltonian cycle is shown to increase the readability of the figure. In Fig. 4, we present the number of landmarks required for varying demand intensities. Higher demand corresponds to higher network activity since packet forwarding/transmission consumes most of the sensor energy, as mentioned before. As seen from the figure, for demand intensity of 1kJ, 15 landmarks are determined. Naturally, the number of landmarks increases as the demand intensity increases. The extreme case would be reserving a landmark for each sensor and this would be the equivalent to visiting each sensor node for charging. To avoid this approach, the battery size of the charger can be extended. Figure 5 illustrates the total path lengths of four MICROs when the landmark selection and clustering of SuReSense is employed, in comparison to the case where each sensor node is individually visited using the shortest Hamiltonian cycle. Even for high demand intensities, SuReSense is able to produce paths with almost 150m shorter length. Reduced path length implies that less time is spent away from the docking station, allowing more time to top up the battery of the MICROs since the charging process is repeated periodically. Furthermore, it reduces the waiting time of the sensor nodes. We also evaluate SuReSense for varying wireless power transfer ranges. For these set of simulations, the demand intensity is fixed to 2kJ. In Fig. 6, we present the path length for

100 90 80 70 60 100m 50 40 30 20 10 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 100m 60 70 80 90 100 Landmarks Sensors

Figure 3. Sensor nodes, landmarks and the hamiltonian path in one of the SuReSense clusters.

50

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Number of landmarks

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15

10 0

2 3 Demand intensity (KJ)

Figure 4. Number of landmarks in SuReSense.

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ranges varying between 2m to 5m. As seen from the figure, for larger ranges, once again SuReSense is able to reduce the path length when compared to the case that each node is visited with regards to the shortest Hamiltonian cycle.

900 SuReSense Shortest cycle 800

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

A wide range of smart grid assets can be monitored and diagnosed by the low-cost WSN technology. Besides the numerous advantages of WSNs, limited lifetime of the sensor nodes have been considered as a significant performance bottleneck. Although, duty cycling, energy-efficient network protocols and energy-harvesting techniques offer solutions to extend the lifetime of the WSNs, still the maximum lifetime of a typical sensor node is limited while the smart grid requires long-lasting monitoring tools. In this article, we discuss the employment of wireless rechargeable sensor networks to answer the large-scale, low-cost and long-term monitoring needs of the smart grid. We propose a Sustainable wireless Rechargeable sensor network (SuReSense) where Mobile wIreless Charger RObots (MICRO) are used to replenish the batteries of the sensor nodes by visiting several locations in the field. These locations are called as landmarks, and they are determined periodically based on the energy requirements of the sensors. To further reduce the path length and waiting time, the landmarks are organized into clusters according to the geographical proximity criterion, and a Hamiltonian cycle is formed between the docking stations of the MICROs and the associated landmarks. SuReSense reduces the length of the path traversed by the MICROs compared to the case when each sensor is individually visited. This approach increases the duration spent at the docking station; hence it provides more time for replenishing the batteries of MICROs. Furthermore, it allows reducing the waiting time of each sensor for energy replenishment. Utilizing wireless rechargeable sensor networks in the smart grid is a novel concept, and it is anticipated to increase the adoption rate of sensor networks by increasing their credibility and sustainability. As a future research direction, sleep scheduling, energy-efficient communication protocols and energy-harvesting technologies can be utilized along with SuReSense. Furthermore, selection of MICROs and their dispatch frequency are left as future work. Another research direction is combining mobile charging with mobile data collection solutions which can further reduce energy consumption of the sensor nodes.
Path length (m)

700

600

500

400

300

200

100 0 1 1.5 2 2.5 Demand intensity (KJ) 3 3.5 4

Figure 5. Total length of path traversed by MICROs for varying demand intensity.

1000

SuReSense Shortest cycle

800

Path length (m)

600

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0 2 2.5 3 3.5 Range (m) 4 4.5 5

Figure 6. Total length of path traversed by MICROs for varying range (Rc).
[4] S. Tozlu, Feasibility of Wi-Fi Enabled Sensors for Internet of Things, 7th Intl. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conf. (IWCMC), 48 July 2011, pp. 29196. [5] Powercast Corporation, http://www.powercastco.com/. [6] A. Nasipuri et al. , Design Considerations for A LargeScale Wireless Sensor Network for Substation Monitoring, Proc. IEEE 35th Conf. Local Computer Networks (LCN), Oct. 2010, pp. 86673. [7] M. Erol-Kantarci and H. T. Mouftah, Wireless Sensor Networks for Cost- Efficient Residential Energy Management in the Smart Grid, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol.2, no.2, June 2011, pp. 31425. [8] V. Pryyma, D. Turgut, and L. Boloni, Active Time Scheduling for Rechargeable Sensor Networks, Elsevier Computer Networks, vol. 54, no. 4, 2010, pp. 63140.

REFERENCES
[1] G. Andersson et al. , Causes of the 2003 Major Grid Blackouts in North America and Europe, and Recommended Means to Improve System Dynamic Performance, IEEE Trans. Power Systems, vol. 20, no. 4, Nov. 2005, pp. 192228. [2] V. C. Gungor, B. Lu, and G. P. Hancke, Opportunities and Challenges of Wireless Sensor Networks in Smart Grid, IEEE Trans. Industrial Electronics, vol. 57, no. 10, Oct 2011, pp. 355764. [3] M. Erol-Kantarci and H. T. Mouftah, Wireless Multimedia Sensor and Actor Networks for the Next-Generation Power Grid, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks J., vol. 9 no. 4, 2011, pp. 54211.

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[9] R. D. Mohammady, K. Chowdhury, and M. Di Felice, Routing and Link Layer Protocol Design for Sensor Networks with Wireless Energy Transfer, IEEE GLOBECOM, Miami, Dec. 2010. [10] L. Shi et al. , On Renewable Sensor Networks with Wireless Energy Transfer, Pro. IEEE INFOCOM, Shanghai, China, Apr. 1015, 2011, pp. 135058. [11] M. Zhao, J. Li, and Y. Yang, Joint Mobile Energy Replenishment and Data Gathering in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks, Proc. 23rd Intl. Teletraffic Congress, Sept. 68, 2011, San Francisco, USA. [12] S. He et al. , Energy Provisioning in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks, Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, Shanghai, China, Apr. 1015, 2011, pp. 200614.

B.Sc. degree from the Department of Control and Computer Engineering of the Istanbul Technical University, in 2001. Her main research interests are wireless sensor networks, smart grid communications, cyber-physical systems and underwater sensor networks. She has over 40 referred journal articles and conference papers. H USSEIN M OUFTAH [F] (mouftah@uottawa.ca) joined the School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa in September 2002 as a Canada Research Chair Professor. He has been with the ECE Department at Queens University (19792002), where he was prior to his departure a Full Professor and the Department Associate Head. He has three years of industrial experience mainly at BNR of Ottawa, now Nortel Networks (197779). He served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Communications Magazine and IEEE ComSoc Director of Magazines, Chair of the Awards Committee and Director of Education. He has been a Distinguished Speaker of the IEEE ComSoc (200007). He is the author or coauthor of six books, 40 book chapters and more than 1000 technical papers and 10 patents in this area. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Royal Society of Canada RSC: The Academy of Science.

BIOGRAPHIES
MELIKE EROL-KANTARCI [M08] (melike.erolkantarci@uottawa.ca) is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa. She received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Computer Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, in 2004 and 2009, respectively. During her Ph.D., she was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the Department of Computer Science, University of California Los Angeles. She received the

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