IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO.
4, JULY 2014
Traffic Modeling and Optimization in Public and
Private Wireless Access Networks for Smart Grids
Obada Al-Khatib, Student Member, IEEE, Wibowo Hardjawana, Member, IEEE, and Branka Vucetic, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The major issue in smart grid (SG) communications
networks is the latency management of a vast amount of SG traffic
in the access network that connects power substations to a large
number of SG monitoring devices. There are three possible deploy-
ments for the SG access network considered by power industries:
1) a public access network with a mix of SG and human-to-human
(H2H) traffic; 2) a private access network exclusively assigned to
SG communications; and 3) a mix of private and public access net-
works, referred to as hybrid access networks. The SG communica-
tions traffic is classified as fixed-scheduling (FS) and event-driven
(ED). The FS and ED traffic, generated by SG devices, occur on
a periodic basis and as a response to electricity supply conditions,
respectively. In this paper, we develop traffic models for public, pri-
vate, and hybrid SG access networks based on queuing theory. By
using these models, we derive an expression for the mean queuing
delay for each traffic class in each network. We then propose an op-
timization problem to find the optimal partitioning of the SG traffic
in a hybrid access network. The analytical results obtained from
the proposed models agree very well with the simulation results.
Index Terms—Analytical models, difference-differential equa-
tions, Markov processes, probability generating functions, queuing
analysis, wireless access networks.
I. INTRODUCTION
S MART GRID (SG) is a technology that will improve effi-
ciency, reliability, and stability of the existing power grid
by effectively managing and controlling the grid resources. At
the core of the SG is the integration of communications net-
works with the power grid, where the most challenging issue is
the management of a vast amount of SG communications traffic
in the access network. The access network connects power sub-
stations to a large number of SG devices installed for monitoring
the quality of the power supply at the generation, transmission,
and distribution levels of the power grid (e.g., phase monitoring
units) and at the customer premises (e.g., smart meters) [1].
There are three possible deployments for the SG access net-
works considered by power industries [2]–[7]. The first option
is public access networks, typically leased by the electric utility
from a telecommunications operator, where the network carries
Human-to-Human (H2H) communications traffic in addition to
Manuscript received July 18, 2013; revised December 14, 2013; accepted
January 22, 2014. Date of current version June 18, 2014. This work was sup-
ported by the Australian Research Council Linkage project, LP110200744 and
Ausgrid, as a commercial partner. Paper no. TSG-00538-2013.
The authors are with the Centre of Excellence in Telecommunications, School
of Electrical and Information Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney,
NSW 2006, Australia (e-mail: obada.alkhatib@sydney.edu.au; wibowo.hard-
jawana@sydney.edu.au; branka.vucetic@sydney.edu.au).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSG.2014.2304495
1949-3053 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1949
SG communications traffic. The second choice is private access
networks, where the network is used exclusively for SG commu-
nications traffic, typically owned by the utility. The main ben-
efit of private over public access networks, which comes with
the excessively expensive infrastructure cost, is the tight control
of the transmission quality [7]. Although the public access net-
work provides a cost and operational advantage, the presence of
H2H traffic makes it difficult to control the stringent delay re-
quirements of some SG services [6]. The third option is to use
a mix of private and public SG access networks, referred to as
hybrid access networks, to utilize the advantages of both net-
works to deliver the SG traffic [2], [4]. Although the choice of
access network deployment is important, to date, there are no
practical studies validating the effectiveness of these network
deployments quantitatively.
From the network performance point of view, the choice of a
SG access network depends on the characteristics of the com-
munications traffic generated by the SG devices and their delay
requirements. The SG communications traffic is classified as
fixed-scheduling (FS) or event-driven (ED) [8]. The FS traffic
is typically an operational traffic between the utility’s control
center and SG devices that contains meter readings (MR) data
and is transmitted on a periodic basis. The ED traffic is a de-
mand response traffic to electricity supply conditions. Thus, a
low delay of this traffic is critical to guarantee an efficient op-
eration of the power grid. Most research in this area, [9]–[11],
has concentrated on modeling the FS and ED traffic as a random
Poisson process, which cannot capture the periodicity behavior
of the FS traffic. Moreover, it has always been assumed that the
utility can only poll MR data from a single SG device at any time
instant, which is not practical as it should be able to poll MR
data from many SG devices simultaneously. Thus, the models
in [9]–[11] cannot provide an accurate performance analysis for
SG access networks. In [10] and [11], the ED and FS traffic
are assumed to have the same priority and transmitted based
on first-come-first-serve (FCFS) basis. The ED traffic should
have a higher transmission priority than the FS traffic so that any
detected failure in the grid is delivered with a minimum delay
to the utility’s control center to prevent possible catastrophic
events in the grid. The authors in [9] have assumed that the FS
traffic is dropped to allow the transmission of the ED traffic, re-
sulting in a loss of MR data. This assumptions is not practical as
a higher transmission priority for the ED traffic should not result
in a loss of the FS traffic. In the literature of classical queueing
theory, several papers have investigated priority queuing sys-
tems with multiple traffic classes [12]–[19]. In these references,
a Poisson arrival process for all different traffic classes is always
assumed to simplify the analysis. A priority queuing system
1950
with a mix of periodic or deterministic and a random Poisson
process, to model the FS and ED traffic in SG access networks,
has not been investigated.
Note that in the past, hybrid SG networks have been investi-
gated in the context of a mix of discrete and continuous power
systems [20], wired and wireless communications infrastruc-
ture [21], licensed and unlicensed wireless networks [22], and
multiple wireless technologies for wide area, neighbor area, and
home area networks [1]. None of them, however, has considered
a recent idea, proposed by electric utilities and telecommunica-
tion operators, referred to as hybrid SG access network in our
paper [2]–[4]. Here, the utility operators deploy a mix of private
(utility-owned) and public (e.g., leased from telecommunication
operators) wireless cellular access networks, such as long-term
evolution (LTE), to communicate with the SG devices. A similar
hybrid network, referred to as radio access network virtualiza-
tion, has been considered by the Third Generation Partnership
Project (3GPP) for future wireless cellular communication stan-
dards, beyond LTE and LTE-Advanced [23]. Here, the commu-
nications traffic is delivered by using multiple cellular networks
owned by different mobile network operators.
In this paper, we will develop analytical traffic models for
public and private SG access networks based on queuing theory
and then use them to optimize a hybrid SG access network. We
assume that there are three traffic classes, corresponding to the
ED and FS traffic, transmitted by SG devices, and the public
(PU) traffic, transmitted by H2H devices. The arrival processes
of the ED and PU traffic are assumed to be Poisson, while a
deterministic batch arrival process [24] is assumed for the FS
traffic. The transmission times for the three traffic classes are
assumed to follow arbitrary general distributions. The assumed
transmission priority, in descending order, is ED, PU, and FS,
where the ED transmission will not interrupt the current FS or
PU transmissions, i.e., nonpreemptive priority. We first develop
a traffic model for a public SG access network as a queuing
system. The state of the system is represented by the numbers
of ED, FS and PU nodes transmitting and waiting to transmit,
where we refer to nodes as the corresponding traffic sources.
We then derive the probability generating functions (PGFs) for
this queuing system by utilizing the method of supplementary
variable [25], Laplace and z-transforms. These PGFs are used
to derive the performance metrics, including the mean buffer
length and mean queuing delay, of ED and FS traffic in a public
SG access network. Next, we develop a traffic model for a pri-
vate SG access network, in which the state of the system is rep-
resented by the numbers of ED and FS nodes transmitting and
waiting to transmit. We derive the corresponding PGFs to ob-
tain the performance metrics of ED and FS traffic in a private SG
access network. Finally, we use these analytical traffic models
to find the optimum partitioning of the ED and FS traffic in a
hybrid SG access network. The optimization is based on mini-
mizing the delay cost of the hybrid network, subject to the con-
straints of the maximum allowable delay for each traffic class.
The accuracy of the derived analytical expressions is validated
by simulations of a wireless network model with traffic param-
eters obtained from real-world SG traffic profiles deployed by
the Australian’s utility operator (Ausgrid) in their Smart Grid
Smart City project [26]. The analytical and simulation results
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 4, JULY 2014
are shown to agree very well, showing that the proposed models
provide an efficient and accurate tool for evaluating the perfor-
mance of SG access networks. We further show how to apply
the traffic models as a tool for optimizing the hybrid SG access
network.
The contributions of this paper are as follows. We believe
that we have developed the first unified general traffic model for
public, private, and hybrid communications networks for wire-
less access in SG systems, used to analyze the mean queuing
delay. To date, there has been no research on a hybrid of public
and private SG access networks similar to the one proposed in
our paper [1], [20]–[23]. The traffic model is based on a mix of
a deterministic and a Poisson arrival process, representing the
FS and ED traffic in SG access networks, respectively. In ad-
dition, the transmission times are assumed to follow arbitrary
general distributions making our model applicable to any dis-
tribution of the transmission times in a given wireless network
topology. By using this model, we derive analytical expressions
for the mean buffer lengths and mean queuing delays of the ED
and FS traffic. This mix of traffic and the generally-distributed
transmission times result in a non-Markovian process. The ex-
isting approaches [9]–[19] consider only a Markovian process,
which cannot capture the periodicity behavior of the FS traffic
and are not applicable to distributions other than exponential
for the transmission times. Thus, the proposed traffic model will
characterize the SG communications traffic more accurately and
this is shown by simulations using parameters obtained from the
real-world traffic profiles from the Ausgrid Smart Grid Smart
City project. We also formulate the optimal partitioning of the
SG traffic between the private and public SG access networks
in the hybrid configuration as an optimization problem. The op-
timal partitioning is based on a minimization of a cost function,
which is a function of the ED and FS mean queuing delays.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
Sections II and III, we develop traffic models for public and
private SG access networks, respectively, and derive analytical
expressions for the ED and FS mean buffer lengths and mean
queuing delays in each network. We investigate the use of
a hybrid SG access network and the partitioning problem of
the SG traffic into public and private SG access networks in
Section IV. In Section V, we describe the simulation scenario
used to validate the analytical traffic models. In Section VI,
we provide numerical results for the derived analytical traffic
models and verify them by simulations. Finally, Section VII
concludes the paper. We use boldface lower case letters to
denote vectors and boldface upper case letters to denote ma-
trices. is the th entry of vector . and denote the
inverse and the determinant of matrix . adj denotes the
adjugate of matrix and is given by .
is the largest integral value that is not greater than . and
are column and row vectors with all entries are zeros and
ones, respectively.
II. PUBLIC SG ACCESS NETWORK
We develop a three-class non-preemptive priority queuing
system for a wireless public SG access network, where ED, FS,
and PU nodes transmit their packets to the base station (BS). The
uplink transmission bandwidth is subdivided into channels
AL-KHATIB et al.: TRAFFIC MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORKS FOR SGs
and each ED, FS, or PU node is allocated one channel to transmit
its packets. If a node has packets to transmit and all channels are
busy, it will store its packets for transmission in a buffer with re-
spect to its type, i.e., ED, FS, or PU, and will wait until the BS
allocates a channel for it and start transmission. The traffic pri-
ority in descending order is ED, then PU, and lastly FS. Thus,
the BS will first allocate the available channels to the ED nodes
waiting in the buffer, then to the PU nodes, and finally to the FS
nodes. Among the same type of nodes waiting in the buffer, for
example among the ED nodes, the BS can allocate the channels
to the nodes based on any scheduling algorithm such as strict
priority queuing (SPQ) [27] or proportional fairness (PF) [28].
The interarrival times of the ED and PU traffic are assumed
to follow a Poisson distribution with mean interarrival times
of and , respectively. The interarrival times of the
FS traffic are assumed to follow a deterministic distribution
with equal lengths of . We further assume a batch arrival
process [29] for the FS traffic since a number of SG nodes are
polled for their FS packets every , resulting in synchronous
transmissions. The batch size is a discrete random variable ,
which obey any discrete probability distribution function (pdf)
such as constant, uniform or geometric. The probability that a
batch size of FS nodes will arrive every is given by for
, where is the maximum batch size and is as-
sumed to be known. The transmission times of ED, FS, and PU
nodes are independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) random
variables following arbitrary general distributions with pdfs
, and and mean transmission times , and write the state probability as
and , respectively. The stability condition of this queuing
system is given by [30]
(1)
where and is the mean
batch size of FS nodes. In the remainder of this paper, we assume
that (1) is satisfied. Note that our traffic models are valid under
any scheduling algorithm since we have assumed that the trans-
mission times can follow any distribution [30]. This is because
the distribution of the transmission times depends on the sched-
uling algorithm applied. In other words, different scheduling al-
gorithms will result in different distributions for the transmis-
sion times. Thus, the pdfs of the ED, FS, and PU transmission
times, denoted by and , respectively, depend on the
scheduling algorithm applied.
A. States of the Model
The state of the queuing system at any time instant can
be represented by the numbers of ED, FS, and PU nodes
transmitting, denoted by , and , respectively,
and the numbers of ED, FS, and PU nodes in the buffers,
denoted by , and , respectively. Thus, the
state space of the system at time is represented by the
process , such that
and .A
stochastic process is Markovian if it has the Markov property,
which indicates that the future state of the process depends on
its present state only, not on the sequence of the past states
that preceded it [31]. Thus, the process is non-Markovian
1951
since the next batch arrival of the FS traffic depends on the
time of the previous FS batch arrival. In addition, the next
departure of an ED, FS, or PU node depends on the time of
the previous ED, FS, or PU departure, respectively. (An arrival
or a departure of a node indicates that the node has packets to
be transmitted (traffic source) or has successfully transmitted
its packets to the BS, respectively.) Consequently, the process
does not describe the complete past history of the system
at time because it does not know when the previous FS
batch arrival or the previous ED, FS, or PU departure has
happened [30]. The first step in analyzing our queuing system
is to describe its state space by a Markovian process. Therefore,
we introduce a joint process ,
where is the remaining time until the next FS batch arrival
at time and are the remaining times until
the next departures of ED, FS, and PU nodes, respectively. This
joint process is Markovian, since the complete past history is
now provided by the variables and .
This is referred to as the supplementary variable method [25].
By assuming independency between these variables and based
on this joint process, the probability of the system being in a
specific state, referred to as the state probability, at time , is
defined as the probability of having and
nodes at time , where the remaining time until the next
FS batch arrival at time , denoted by , equals , and the
remaining times until the next ED, FS, and PU departures at
time , denoted by and , are and
, respectively. We denote
(2)
We also define the vector , where and are row vectors
whose entries are the indices of vector entries that are incre-
mented or decremented by one, respectively. Thus, for given
and , the th entry of the vector is given by
if if , and otherwise, where
. If vector or is empty, then we write as
or , respectively. Also, to simplify the analysis, we di-
vide all possible states of the system into two sets: 1) set :
includes the states when there is at least one
idle channel and all buffers are empty
; and 2) set : includes the
states when all channels are busy
and it has an infinite number of states.
The transition of the queuing system from one state to another
happens due to the occurrence of one of the following mutually
exclusive events: an arrival of ED, PU, or FS node, a departure
of ED, PU, or FS node. Fig. 1(a) shows all possible transitions
into a state in set , where the number of nodes is given by
. For example, in
Fig. 1(a), an arrival of ED, PU, or FS node indicates that the
transition happens from a state where the number of nodes is
given by ,
or , respectively. Fig. 1(b) shows all
possible transitions into a state in set , where the number of
nodes is given by
. In Fig. 1(b), the transitions with arrow lines happen
1952 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 4, JULY 2014

of ED, PU, and FS node, respectively. Note that the second term
on the right-hand side of (3) corresponds to the case when there
are no arrivals nor departures, i.e., the state remains the same.
The second set of the steady-state Chapman–Kolmogorov equa-
tions gives the steady-state probability for each state in and
this set is given by

(5)

where

Fig. 1. (a) State transitions into a state in set . (b) State transitions into a state
in set (arr: arrival, dep: departure).

(6)
for any value of , and , the transitions with circle,
square, and solid lines happen strictly when
, and , respectively. For ex-
ample, in Fig. 1(b), an arrival of ED node indicates that the (7)
transition happens from a state where the number of nodes is
given by if or
if .

B. Solution for the Model (8)

To derive the steady-state Chapman–Kolmogorov equations
[30] for the above queuing system, the following assumptions
are made, so that closed-form expressions for the performance
metrics of the ED and FS traffic can be obtained. At the
arrival instant of the FS traffic, 1) all channels are busy and
there are no ED nodes in the ED buffer, or 2) there is at most
one idle channel and there are only FS nodes transmitting.
We also assume that there is at least one node in the buffers
at the departure instant of an ED, PU, or FS node. These
assumptions eliminate some of the system states as will be
shown later. In addition, the second assumption eliminates
the transition into a state in set due to an arrival of FS
node (FS arr) as shown in Fig. 1(a). This is because such a
transition happens from a state where there are at least two idle
channels, which contradicts the second assumption. As will
be shown in Section VI, these assumptions do not affect the
accuracy of the analysis. By defining and
, we write two
sets of steady-state Chapman–Kolmogorov equations for each
state in and . The first set gives the steady-state probability
for each state in as follows:
(3)
where
(4)
and . Each term on the right-hand side of (4) cor-
responds to one of the transition events in Fig. 1(a). The first
two terms correspond to an arrival of an ED and PU node, re-
spectively, while the last three terms correspond to a departure
(9)
where if and 0 otherwise and
is the pdf of the deterministic distribution for the FS arrival
process, where is 1 when and 0 otherwise. If
, a batch of FS nodes has just arrived. Similarly, if ,
or is zero, then an ED, PU, or FS node has just completed its
transmission, respectively. We emphasize here that the FS nodes
generating deterministic traffic every are synchronized. This
is because a large number of FS nodes asynchronously gener-
ating traffic at deterministic times may mimic random traffic,
e.g., Poisson, and consequently is no longer the pdf of the
deterministic distribution. In this paper, we only consider a syn-
chronous batch FS traffic transmission since in real SG access
networks, deployed by utility operators, smart meters sending
their periodic metering information updates, represented by the
FS traffic in our model, are always synchronized [26]. Note that
each term on the right-hand side of (6) corresponds to one of the
transition events represented by the arrow lines in Fig. 1(b). The
first two terms correspond to an arrival of ED and PU node, re-
spectively, the following three terms correspond to a departure
of ED, PU, and FS node, respectively, and the last term corre-
sponds to an arrival of a batch of FS nodes. Similarly, each term
on the right-hand side of (7), (8), and (9) corresponds to one of
the transition events represented by the circle, square, and solid
line in Fig. 1(b), respectively. Note that the second term on the
right-hand side of (5) corresponds to the case when there are no
arrivals nor departures.
To find the steady-state probabilities of the above queuing
system, from which we can calculate the performance metrics
of the ED and FS traffic, we need to solve the difference-
differential equations (3) and (5). The Laplace transform is
AL-KHATIB et al.: TRAFFIC MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORKS FOR SGs 1953

used first to write (3) and (5) as linear difference equations, where are the shorthand notations
given by for , respectively. The ,
and vectors are given by
(10)
, and
(11) , where

, and
respectively, where . We do not have the
, and . Next, since PGFs as entries of for ,
(11) represents a set of an infinite number of equations as there due to our assumptions, which makes the steady-state
are an infinite number of states in , we apply the z-transform probabilities, given by these PGFs, equal to zeros.
to (11) to compress it into a set of a finite number of equations. The are the shorthand notations for
Note that the z-transform is not computed for (10) since it , respectively. Each
already represents a set of finite number of equations, as there of the , and matrices has
are a finite number of states in , given by . rows and their entries are explicit functions of
To compute the z-transform of (11), we define three PGFs for and .
the steady-state probabilities, when there are ED and The vector gives the steady-state probabilities that
PU nodes transmitting, all channels are busy, and there is at are not captured by the PGFs in (12)–(14). It is given
least one ED, PU, or FS node in the buffer. The first PGF, when by , where
there is at least one ED node in the buffer, is given by and gives the steady-state probabilities when
and
, respectively.
Thus, and are given by
(12) and , where
and
where ,
. The , and are complex where we dropped the subscripts , and since they
variables, such that . The second PGF, are all equal to zero. and are the corresponding
when there are no ED nodes in the buffer and there is at least vectors to and , respectively, and they give the
one PU node in the buffer, is given by steady-state probabilities at the arrival instant of FS nodes.
Now, to find explicit expressions for the PGFs given by
in (15) as functions of , and , we need to find the PGFs
(13) given by and , and the steady-state probabil-
ities given by . This can be done as follows: 1) We set the
denominator of (15) to zero and then solve it for the -variable.
where . The third PGF, There are roots for the -variable as functions of
when there are no ED and PU nodes in the buffer and there is at , and for the equation , referred to as -roots. Due
least one FS node in the buffer, is given by to space limitation, the proof is omitted; 2) Since is analytic
in the region [32], these
(14) -roots are also the roots of the numerator in (15), as shown in
[24]. Thus, we set the numerator of (15) to zero after replacing
with each of the obtained -roots to obtain
where . Now, we compute
the z-transform for each set of equations in (11), which give the
steady-state probabilities for the states having the same and
(16)
. This is first done by multiplying both sides of each equation
in this set with . Then, we add the left-hand sides where
together and the right-hand sides together of these equations in , and
this set, for a given and , and equate them to obtain a . Note that (16) has
single equation. Finally, we rewrite this equation to obtain an and as its variables only, i.e., variable is eliminated. Next,
expression for in terms of we apply the above two steps to (16) since is analytic in
and by using (12)–(14). We repeat this process for the region , i.e., we find the
each and to obtain linear equations for -roots of the denominator in (16) and then
all and . replace in the numerator of (16) with each of the obtained
These equations can be represented as a matrix equation given -roots to obtain
by

(15) (17)
1954 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 4, JULY 2014

where and
(23)
. Note that (17) has and as its variables
only, i.e., variable is eliminated. Next, we apply the same two
steps to (17) but in this case we find the -roots
to obtain , where the variable is III. PRIVATE SG ACCESS NETWORK
eliminated. This matrix equation rep- We model the traffic in a wireless private SG access network
resents a system of linear equations. Finally, we as a two-class nonpreemptive priority queuing system, since
form a system of linear there is no PU traffic. Thus, the states of the system in sat-
equations, which is a collection of the equations isfy while the states in
given by , the equa- satisfy . The possible
tions given by (10), and the equation of the average number of transitions into a state in or are similar to Fig. 1 with no
idle channels transitions due to arrivals or departures of PU nodes and with
. By considering the same assumptions and fol-
lowing the same steps as in Section II, we write the two sets of
steady-state Chapman–Kolmogorov equations for each state in
(18) and as

where . This (24)

system of linear equations has the set of variables given by
, the first entry of the vector since (25)
the other entries are all zeros, because of our assumptions,
and the , such that .
By solving this system of equations, we can find these vari- respectively, where and are derived by setting all PU
ables, which are steady-state probabilities, as functions of traffic parameters ( equal to zero in (4) and (6)–(9)
. Then, we substitute the steady-state probabilities, given and . Similar to Section II-B, we first
by , in (17) to find the PGFs given by as functions apply the Laplace transform to (24) and (25). Next, we apply
of and . Then, we substitute the calculated and the z-transform to (25) by using the following PGFs:
in (16) to find the PGFs given by . Finally, we substitute
the calculated , and in (15) to find the PGFs given (26)
by as functions of , and . Now, by defining the
PGF for all steady-state probabilities, when all channels are
busy and there are ED and PU nodes transmitting as (27)
, for

, and by using the explicit expressions found for where

, and , we can write and
, to obtain the matrix equation
(19)

where , such
that (28)

where and are the shorthand notations for

and , respectively. The and
vectors are given by and
for . , respec-
tively. The entries of the , and
C. Performance Metrics matrices are functions of and
. The counterparts of and vectors are
By using the properties of the PGF and the Laplace transform
given by and
[33], the ED and and FS mean buffer lengths are given by
.
To find explicit expressions for the PGFs, given by in (28),
(20)
as functions of , and , we eliminate the variable and then
the variable from (28), by following the same steps as in
(21) Section II-B, to obtain a system of linear equations that can be
written as . Note that the number of both -roots
respectively. By using Little’s law [34], the ED and FS mean
and -roots is given by and thus is a
queuing delays are given, respectively, by
system of linear equations. Finally, we form a system
of linear equations, which is a collec-
(22) tion of the equations given by , the
AL-KHATIB et al.: TRAFFIC MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORKS FOR SGs 1955

equations given by (10), and the equation of the

average number of idle channels

(29)

where . This system of linear

equations has the set of variables given by ,
the first entry of the vector , and the , such
that . By solving this system of equa-
tions, we can find these variables, which are steady-state prob-
abilities, as functions of . Then, we can determine and
by back-substitution as in Section II. Finally, by defining the
PGF for all steady-state probabilities, when all channels are
busy and there are ED nodes transmitting as
, for
, we can write

(30)
Fig. 2. Traffic partitioning in a hybrid SG access network.

where .
into consideration the interests of both public network operators
A. Performance Metrics and electric utilities. For a given service area, we assume that
The ED and FS mean queuing delays, denoted by and both private and public networks are available to deliver the SG
, respectively, are similarly given by (22) and (23) with traffic and the traffic parameters
and are given by are fixed and known. Then, we formulate the optimal parti-
tioning of the SG traffic in a hybrid SG access network as a
(31) constrained optimization problem given by

(32) Minimize

subject to
IV. HYBRID SG ACCESS NETWORK (33)
A hybrid access network will allow electric utilities to best
utilize the advantages of both public and private SG access net- where is a function that calculates the total cost of using
works to effectively support large variations in the communi- public and private networks in terms of ED and FS mean
cations requirements of different SG services. By assuming that queuing delays, and are the costs of every unit time
there are SG nodes in a certain geographic area, the incoming of delay for the SG traffic delivered by either a private or a
ED traffic is partitioned by letting and public network in the hybrid configuration, respectively. The
SG nodes to transmit their ED packets by using the private and and ( and ) are the mean queuing delays for
public networks, respectively, . The incoming FS the ED and FS traffic that is delivered by the public (private)
traffic is partitioned by letting and network, respectively. The approach to derive ( and )
SG nodes to transmit their FS packets by using the private and and ( and ) is similar to the approach used to derive
public networks, respectively, . Thus, the queuing ( and ) in Section II and ( and ) in Section III,
system to model the traffic in a hybrid network is a combi- respectively. The is the mean queuing delay of the PU
nation of the queuing systems developed for the public net- traffic that is delivered by the public network in the hybrid
work in Section II-B with the parameters and replaced by configuration. The constraints in (33) are to ensure that the ED,
and , respectively, and the traffic model devel- FS and PU mean queuing delays do not exceed the maximum
oped for the private network in Section III with the parameters allowed mean queuing delay for each traffic class, given by
and replaced by and , respectively. This is illus- , and , respectively. These constraints
trated in Fig. 2. are assumed to take into consideration the interests of both
One of the key questions that arise for public network op- public network operators and electric utilities by maintaining
erators and electric utilities is how to efficiently partition the the communications requirements of both SG and H2H services
SG traffic onto the private and public networks. In other words, in terms of the mean queuing delay. Unfortunately, there is no
what are the optimum values of and such that the simple analytical solution to this optimization problem in order
communications requirements of the SG and H2H services are to find closed-form expressions for the optimal values of
maintained? Ideally, the optimal partitioning of the SG traffic and , because of their dependency on many independent
should be achieved according to an objective function that takes variables, such as and , and because of the
1956 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 4, JULY 2014

many constraints introduced in this optimization problem. In

Section VI, we will evaluate the cost function for different
combinations of the partitioning variables, and , from
which we can find their optimum values that are the solutions
of the problem in (33).

V. MODEL VALIDATION IN WIRELESS CELLULAR NETWORKS

In this section, we describe a wireless cellular network model,
used to validate the accuracy of the proposed traffic models. The
validation scenario is based on an LTE wireless cellular network
model, with cells in a hexagonal grid, as shown in Fig. 3, with
. In this scenario, each node is assigned one resource
block (RB) [35]–[37] and the nodes are distributed uniformly in
each cell with an inter-site distance of [38]–[41]. The transmit
power of node on RB , denoted by , is set according to
a simple open-loop power control scheme defined in [42]

(34)

where is the node maximum transmit power, is a ref-

erence power, is the number of assigned RBs to a certain
node, is a constant path loss compensation factor, and PL de-
notes the total path loss between a node and its serving BS.
The distance-dependent path loss in dB is given by
, where is the distance in km between a node
and its serving BS. We consider a log-normal shadowing with
a zero-mean and an 8-dB standard deviation. The multipath
fading follows the 20-tap typical urban channel model [43].
The instantaneous uplink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio
(SINR) for node , when assigned RB , is given by
(35)
where is the channel gain between node in cell and
BS is the channel gain between node outside cell and
BS is the background noise, and is the set of interfering
nodes. The instantaneous data rate for node , when assigned
RB , can then be written as
(36)
and its transmission time is given by
(37)
where is the uplink transmission bandwidth, is the number
of RBs, and is the packet size. With the above wireless cellular
network model, the transmission time of any node depends on
the channel conditions between the node and its serving BS and
on its uplink SINR value in (35). Here, a cell-edge node will
have a relatively low uplink SINR value compared to inner-cell
nodes due to the increased interference coming from the nodes
in adjacent cells. Thus, its data rate, given by (36), is reduced
and consequently its transmission time, given by (37), is higher
than the transmission times of inner-cell nodes.
We will also consider two scheduling algorithms for the node
selection by the BS, namely strict priority queuing (SPQ) [27]
and proportional fairness (PF) [28]. In both algorithms, the BS
allocates the available RBs to the ED nodes, then to the PU
Fig. 3. Cellular network model, with center cell and two tiers of interfering
cells.
nodes, and lastly to the FS nodes. For the same type of nodes,
the SPQ will assign the RBs based on the FCFS policy and thus
it does not exploit the channel conditions in the scheduling de-
cision. On the other hand, the PF algorithm allows for better
resource utilization by exploiting the channel conditions in as-
signing the RBs to the nodes. Specifically, by using the PF al-
gorithm, the BS will assign for each available RB, the node,
among the same type of nodes, with the highest
ratio, where is given by (36) and is the historical
average data rate for node .
The pdfs and of the ED, FS, and PU transmis-
sion times, respectively, depend on the scheduling algorithm
applied. Thus, to obtain these pdfs under the PF algorithm in
a public SG access network, we first generate three sets of the
ED, FS, and PU transmission times by using (37), where each set
has 1000 values. Then, we use the distribution fitting approach
to find the distribution that best fits each set of these data. For
the distribution fitting, we follow these three steps: 1) choose
the pdfs that can reasonably represent the observed empirical
data; 2) estimate the parameters for each candidate distribution
by using the method of maximum likelihood estimation; and 3)
test the goodness of the fit by using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov
(K-S) test. The reader is referred to [44] for more details on the
distribution fitting. Once and are found, we can
then apply our traffic model in Sections II to calculate the ana-
lytical mean queuing delays in a public SG access network. We
then apply the above steps to find the pdfs and
under the SPQ algorithm in a public SG access network. In a
similar manner, we find the pdfs and in a private SG
access network under the PF and SPQ algorithms.
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, we will validate the accuracy of our traffic
models by using the validation scenario described in the pre-
AL-KHATIB et al.: TRAFFIC MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORKS FOR SGs
TABLE I
SIMULATION PARAMETERS
vious section. We assume a 5-MHz LTE wireless cellular net-
work model with cells, operating at 2.0 GHz. The
5-MHz LTE bandwidth is subdivided into 25 RBs [45]. The
cell has an inter-site distance of meters. The max-
imum uplink transmission power for each node is assumed to
be 24 dBm. The SG traffic parameters used in the simulation
are obtained from real-world SG traffic profiles deployed by
the Ausgrid under the Smart Grid Smart City project. Specif-
ically, we incorporated the data obtained from these traffic pro-
files through the arrival rate of the ED traffic , the periodicity
of the FS traffic , and the maximum FS batch size . By doing
so, the accuracy of our analytical traffic models is verified by
using real-world SG networks. Based on this real data, the ar-
rival rate of the ED nodes is varied between 200 to 1500.
The time between consecutive batch arrivals of the FS nodes is
unit time (ut), where a ut is defined as a 60-second time
frame. The maximum FS batch size is . We assume that
the number of FS nodes synchronized to transmit their packets
at the same time is distributed according to a uniform pdf. The
public traffic intensity in a public SG access network, given by
, is taken to be 1.5. The simulation parameters are
summarized in Table I.
A. Public vs Private SG Access Network
Fig. 4 compares the ED mean queuing delays obtained from
the analytical traffic models and from simulations in public and
private SG access networks under the SPQ and PF scheduling
algorithms. It can be seen that the analytical and simulation re-
sults agree very well, showing that our models provide an ef-
ficient and accurate tool for evaluating the performance of SG
access networks under any scheduling algorithm. Note also that
our analytical results provide a tight upper bound for the mean
queuing delay. We notice that the ED mean queuing delays in
both networks are significantly small even with the increased
. This is due to the priority order of the queuing system,
which gives the ED nodes a higher priority over PU and FS
nodes to transmit their packets. We also notice that the ED mean
queuing delays in the public network are slightly higher than in
the private network under the same scheduling algorithm due
to the presence of the PU traffic which increases the contention
in the public network. It can be seen that the PF algorithm im-
proves the ED mean queuing delay by at least 2 times in both
1957
Fig. 4. ED mean queuing delay (priv: private, pub: public, ana: analytical, sim:
simulation).
public and private SG access networks. This is expected as the
PF algorithm exploits the channel conditions to maximize the
data rate while taking fairness between nodes into consideration
and consequently minimizing the nodes transmission times as
shown in (37). By minimizing the transmission times, the nodes
in the buffers do not have to wait for long times to start trans-
mission. We also notice that increasing significantly might
cause some SG services with ED traffic to have big queuing de-
lays and consequently might cause a severe failure in the power
grid. For example, when , the mean queuing delay
of an ED node in a public SG access network under the PF algo-
rithm is around ut, which is equivalent to 300 ms. This
is significantly bigger than the latency requirement of some ED
synchrophasor services (20 ms) [46].
As for the FS traffic, Fig. 5 depicts the FS mean queuing delay
versus the ED arrival rate in public and private SG access
networks under the SPQ and PF scheduling algorithms. Once
again, it can be seen that the analytical and simulation results
agree very well, confirming the accuracy of our traffic models.
We notice that the FS mean queuing delay increases more sig-
nificantly in a public network than in a private network. For ex-
ample, when , the FS mean queuing delays in the
private and public networks under the PF algorithm are approx-
imately 3 ut and 7 ut, respectively, which corresponds to an in-
crease of approximately 130%. This significant increase in the
FS mean queuing delays in the public network is because the
FS traffic has the lowest priority; therefore, the FS nodes cannot
transmit their packets until all ED and PU nodes waiting in the
buffers transmit their packets. Once again, the PF algorithm out-
performs the SPQ algorithm in terms of providing smaller FS
mean queuing delays in both public and private SG access net-
works. In addition, by comparing 4 and 5, it can be seen that the
increase in the FS mean queuing delay is more significant than
the increase in the ED mean queuing delay with the increasing
in public and private networks. This is due to the priority
order of the traffic. For example, when in the public
network under the PF algorithm, the ED mean queuing delay is
approximately ut, while the FS mean queuing delay
is 22 ut. The last important observation is that increasing
might lead to a tremendous delay for the FS node beyond the
1958
Fig. 5. FS mean queuing delay.
Fig. 6. Performance metrics under exponential and deterministic FS arrival
process.
maximum allowed delay although SG services with FS traffic
have high latency requirement. For example, when
the mean queuing delay of a FS node in a private network under
the PF algorithm is around 8 ut, which is equivalent to 8 minutes.
This is significantly bigger than the maximum allowed latency
of 1–15 s for some FS smart metering services [46].
Our investigation also reveals that a Markovian traffic as-
sumption for FS nodes, widely used in the literature [9] and [10],
will lead to a wrong mean queuing delay analysis for SG access
networks. This is because the real fundamental latency problem,
caused by transmissions of a large number of SG nodes, cannot
be observed accurately without the quasi-deterministic pattern
for the FS traffic. In Fig. 6, we have shown that the FS mean
queuing delay in a private SG access network with quasi-deter-
ministic FS traffic increases exponentially with increasing ED
arrival rate. On the contrary, the FS mean queuing delay with a
Markovian FS traffic increases linearly with increasing ED ar-
rival rate. Thus, a new fundamental insight on the behavior of
SG access networks as well as accurate performance analysis
are obtained by using our proposed traffic models. In addition,
the Markovian FS traffic significantly impacts the accuracy of
the ED mean queuing delay, leading to an ED mean queuing
delay underestimation by at least 3 times.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 4, JULY 2014
Fig. 7. Cost versus partitioning variables .
B. Hybrid SG Access Network
Our aim now is to find the optimum values of the partitioning
variables and to minimize the cost function in (33).
Since a private network is designed specifically to deliver the
SG traffic, it must meet the communications requirements of
different SG services. Thus, the cost of a unit time of delay for
the SG traffic in a private network, , is higher than its cost
in a public network, . Consequently, we take and
. We also take ut and
ut since ED services, unlike FS services, are more critical to
the power grid operation and consequently cannot tolerate high
delays. We take and assume the PF scheduling algo-
rithm for the public and private networks. Fig. 7 shows the cost
for different combinations of the partitioning variables and
. The minimum cost occurs when and .
In other words, the minimum cost occurs when 100% and 40%
of the ED and FS traffic is delivered by the private network, re-
spectively, while 60% of the FS traffic is delivered by the public
network. For this case, the cost is approximately 0.14 and the ED
and FS queuing delays on the private and public networks are
ut, ut,
ut, respectively. These results show that both private and public
,
access networks have vital roles to play in designing SG access
networks.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we developed traffic models for public, private,
and hybrid SG access communications networks. The traffic
models are based on a nonpreemptive priority queuing system.
The mean buffer lengths and mean queuing delays have been
evaluated for ED and FS traffic classes. The simulation results
agree very well with the analytical results derived from the
proposed models. Thus, these models provide an efficient tool
for evaluating the performance of SG access networks before
costly equipment procurement and deployment takes place. In
addition, we discussed how utilities and public network oper-
ators can use these models to solve the optimization problem
of finding the optimal partitioning of the SG traffic onto the
public and private SG access networks to minimize the mean
queuing delays of SG services. The results showed that both
public and private SG access networks have important roles to
play in designing SG access networks.
AL-KHATIB et al.: TRAFFIC MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WIRELESS ACCESS NETWORKS FOR SGs
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Ausgrid for providing exper-
imental data for the models validation in Section VI. The would
also like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their
suggestions, which improved the quality of the paper.
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Obada Al-Khatib (S’13) received the B.Sc. degree
in electrical engineering (Honors) from Qatar Uni-
versity, Doha, Qatar, in 2006 and the M.Eng. degree
in communication and computer (Honors) from the
National University of Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia, in
2010. He is currently working towards the Ph.D. de-
gree in electrical and information engineering at the
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
From 2006 to 2009, he was an Electrical Engineer
with the Consolidated Contractors International Co.,
Qatar, where he was responsible for installing testing,
and the commissioning electrical and communication systems. His current re-
search interests are in the areas of smart grid communication, wireless resource
allocation and management, cooperative communications, and wireless network
virtualization. His research is supported by the University of Sydney Interna-
tional Scholarship (USydIS) and Norman I Price scholarship.
1960
Wibowo Hardjawana (M’09) received the B.Eng.
degree in electronics engineering from the University
of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, in 1998 and the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Uni-
versity of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, in 2009.
From 1999 to 2004, he was a Telecom Engineer
with Singapore Telecom Ltd, Singapore, where he
was responsible for cellular and fiber network imple-
mentation and planning. He is currently a Research
Fellow with Telecommunication Laboratory, School
of Electrical and Information Engineering, Univer-
sity of Sydney. His current research interests are wireless communications, with
a focus on multiple-input-multiple-output, cooperative communications, and
coding techniques.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 4, JULY 2014
Branka Vucetic (M’83–SM’00–F’03) currently
holds the Peter Nicol Russel Chair of Telecommu-
nications Engineering at the University of Sydney,
Sydney, Australia. The research of Prof. Vucetic has
involved collaborations with industry and govern-
ment organizations in Australia and several other
countries. She is an internationally recognized expert
in wireless communications and coding.
Prof. Vucetic has been elected to the IEEE Fellow
grade for her research contributions in channel coding
and its applications in wireless communications.