I Choose You! But why?: Proposal and evaluation of policies to promote service nodes to switches in PRIME networks

PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution (PRIME) is a Narrowband - PowerLine Communication (NB-PLC) technology widely used in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in Spain and overseas. PRIME networks are formed by one base node (which is part of the AMI data concentrator) and many service nodes (smart meters). The technology allows some smart meters to work as relays (switches), to extend coverage and improve communications performance, and is defined to be plug&play. Thus, whenever a new node joins the network, it listens to the channel waiting for beacons from the concentrator or the switches. If it does not hear anything, it sends kind of SOS message, which makes whatever service node that hear it to send a message to the concentrator requesting being promoted to switch. PRIME specification says nothing, however, on how the concentrator chooses the switch from the possible candidates, this belonging to the know-how of the meter manufacturers. In this paper, we propose several policies to do so and evaluate their impact on the network performance by using the PRIME network simulator SimPRIME. Although there are already publications on optimal positioning of switches in PRIME networks, typically it will not be possible to choose their positioning, so from the best of the authors' knowledge this is the first research work that tackle the issue as it happens in practice, what makes the obtained insights more useful.