Improving IEEE 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks for Reliable Routing in the Smart Grid Infrastructure

Smart grid environments require high standard of reliable transmission technologies to support various types of electrical services and applications. This paper recommends the utilization of IEEE 802.11s based Wireless LAN Mesh Networks as the high-speed backbone networks for smart grid infrastructure. 802.11s based mesh networks can provide high scalability and flexibility, along with low installation and management costs. We also describe some challenging issues of the IEEE 802.11s WLAN mesh based smart grid networks, and propose two novel methods for improving their routing reliability. A simulation study using the ns-3 was conducted to evaluate an important problem in the current mesh networks and prove the superiority of our proposed scheme.