Application of Optical Wireless Communications for the 5G enforced Smart Grids

With the fast development of power grid, there is an urgent need for low delay, wide bandwidth, high reliable, and extensive connected information services, which is planned to be implemented by the emerging 5G technology for future smart grid. 5G has special advantages of providing Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-reliable and Low Latency Communications (uRLLC), and Massive MachineType Communication (mMTC). Based on current situation, the 5G upgrading involves the modifications of business applications, network support, security, management, and other essential aspects, and it will roughly take 3-5 years. The deployment of 5G equipment also requires a great deal of investment and it may not be economically beneficial in some places where power enterprises incomes is not satisfactory. Therefore, this paper proposes the optical wireless communications (OWC) as an supplement technology for it will be able to provide as satisfactory networking performance as 5G while it has advantages of fast deployment and low cost which work as a good supplement to 5G. This paper describes the general deployment method of OWC in power grid systems and analysis its performance via Monte Carlo simulation (MCS).