Channel-Adaptive Transmission Protocols for Smart Grid IoT Communication

Abstract

This article presents a new paradigm for channel dynamics adaptive transmission of intermittent data in smart grid IoT communication networks, wherein novel channel prediction frameworks using stochastic modeling as well as data-driven learning of channel variability are proposed. A probing-based transmission is also proposed as a benchmark. These prediction frameworks are complemented with an adaptive channel coding scheme to increase the transmission reliability of time-critical grid monitoring data over a wireless channel. Through analyzing the prediction and packet loss performance at varying SNR and fading conditions, it is noted that the stochastic modeling framework is efficient when the fading correlation in the channel is high while the learning-based approach is more adaptive to channel dynamics as the correlation reduces. The proposed frameworks are easily implementable on low-cost end nodes, owing to the optimal selection of parameters for low runtime complexity. When compared to probing-based data transmission for a given fading in the channel, the packet loss probability of the learning-based transmission closely matches while with stochastic model loss probability is found to be 12.3% higher. However, their respective signaling overheads are 38% and 98% lower with respect to the probing-based approach, which is a significant gain at the cost of marginally additional computation complexity.