Optimal Communication Scheduling in the Smart Grid

This paper focuses on obtaining the optimal communication topology in the smart grid architecture, i.e., what is the optimal communication setup of smart meters in a smart building. The fact that smart meters also consume energy, more often than not, gets ignored by researchers and engineers. In this paper, we will show that smart meter networks can consume significantly less energy with optimal scheduling. Numerical results show that the overall energy consumption can be reduced by implementing the optimal communication architecture and transmission rate setup, rather than implementing a straightforward communication architecture with uniform channel bandwidth.