Spatially Distributed Traffic Generation for Stress Testing the Robustness of Mission-Critical Smart Grid Communication

Resilient Smart Grids require very robust communication infrastructures, which allow to support the control of the Smart Grid even and especially in critical situations. Current network quality assurance processes, such as drive tests in wireless systems, typically focus on cell coverage and quality of service parameters (e.g., max. data rate) at a specific geographical position, without considering the impact of overload situations. Therefore, this paper introduces a methodology for stress testing a communication infrastructure for Smart Grids by synchronized, distributed so-called Smart Traffic Generators (STGs). Due to their low cost, the STGs become a permanent part of the infrastructure and enable a network operator independent, continuous network quality monitoring. A case study leveraging a LTE deployment demonstrates how the proposed approach can prove the fulfillment of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of time critical Smart Grid applications, even in stress situations with high cell load. Although, the proposed approach has been introduced for Smart Grids, it can also be used for ensuring the communication resilience for other critical infrastructures, e.g., public safety networks.