Hybrid Spectrum Access in Cognitive Neighborhood Area Networks in the Smart Grid

In the smart grid, an efficient and reliable communication infrastructure is crucial for improving system efficiency and stability. In this paper, we leverage cognitive radio technology to construct the smart grid communication infrastructure. The proposed network architecture consists of three sub-areas, cognitive Home Area Networks (HAN), cognitive Neighborhood Area Networks (NAN) and cognitive Wide Area Networks (WAN). We focus on the spectrum resource management in cognitive NANs for efficient smart grid services. A new spectrum access paradigm called hybrid spectrum access is proposed, in which both licensed and unlicensed spectrum bands are intelligently scheduled for the transmission of smart grid services. The admission control problem under hybrid spectrum access is deliberately investigated. The optimal number of leased and reserved channels are derived through two-dimension Markov chain analysis. Numeric results indicate that the hybrid spectrum access strategy significantly improves the network capacity in supporting the smart grid services, compared to the traditional fixed spectrum access strategy.