Cognitive radio ad hoc networks for smart grid communications: A disaster management approach

The explosive growth in users' demand in both areas of wireless communications and power generation has led to design of new key technologies that will be dominant in the near future; cognitive radio networks in communications and smart grid in power field. This paper proposes a novel scenario to marry these technologies together by using a cognitive radio ad hoc network (CRAHN) as the foundation of smart grid communications. It discusses formation and throughput of such a citywide network, the information transferred by the network, and how this structure can be relied upon in disasters, compared to the state-of-the-art.