Dynamic spectrum management in a smart grid heterogeneous network environment

This paper considers a heterogeneous communication network consisting of a Smart Grid Neighborhood Area Network (SG-NAN) and a Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) system. A Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) technique is proposed for this network to allocate resources to the SG-NAN and DVB systems to satisfy SG-NAN QoS requirements while limiting interference to the DVB system. A novel algorithm for estimating SG-NAN capacity is introduced which can be applied to various user distributions and hybrid service situations. The DVB capacity is also calculated under interference constraints. Based on these capacities, spectrum is allocated using a coloring theory algorithm to reduce the complexity. Simulation results are presented which show that DSM provides better performance than traditional fixed spectrum management (FSM) in terms of QoS and secondary spectrum utilization.