Routing Protocol for Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Abstract

Concept of IOT has made the dream of mankind possible by making every device controllable with human voice or automated technology without physical intervention of human beings. It has lead to the development of various applications like Smart Home, Smart Grid, Smart parking, Health monitoring etc. Among the various applications of IOT, this project focuses on Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)- A Smart Grid application which is responsible for collecting,measuring and analyzing consumer smart meter data which in turns helps in dynamic and automatic electricity pricing. In AMI, meter readings are sent from the smart meters to Meter Data Management System(MDMS). Smart Meters generate alarms on events like power failure, power theft and to inform hardware or software configuration issue. For these type of event generated data, latency is an important factor. The main of this thesis is to come up with an optimized routing protocol which can provide minimum latency and high packet delivery ratio. To achieve our goal, we have tested performance of RPL and based on the simulation results of RPL performance,we have understood that minimizing control packets will improve latency and PDR. So, in our proposed approach we have reduced control traffic by introducing a new mechanism for downward paths. In existing RPL, DAO messages are sent to parent(s) of a node at regular intervals. Our study has found that there was no need of sending these messages at regular intervals in AMI network where the smart meters are static nodes. So instead of sending DAO messages, we have introduced DIO ACK message which is send as an acknowledgment to the preferred parent of the node. Unlike DAO, this message is sent only if the preferred parent changes. This change has reduced control traffic and simulation results shows that latency and PDR has improved.