Opportunistic reliability for cognitive radio sensor actor networks in smart grid

Reliability is one of the most important requirements in Smart Grid communications. Reliable detection of an emergency event enables timely response. Within the automated nature of Smart Grid, such detection and response are carried out by sensor and actuator nodes. Therefore, it is important to study the capabilities of wireless sensor actor networks. In this paper, we first present an analysis of reliability in sensor actor networks, and lay out the factors that affect reliability. We then propose a scheme, where actor nodes cooperate to reach a global estimate under interruptions due to licensed user interference, i.e., consensus. We show that consensus improves reliability compared to local estimation of event features. We further show that convergence rate depends on connectivity of actors. Our analyses are generic and can be applied to inhomogeneous licensed user activity and interference on channels. A simulation study is presented to support our analyses and demonstrate the performance of proposed scheme in achieving consensus and mitigating disagreement among actor nodes.