A Grid-Based DAP Placement Approach for Smart Grids

Smart meters are the basic equipment for data collection in a smart grid system and responsible for collecting, measuring, and transmitting original electricity data. The smart meter data is first transmitted to the data aggregation point (DAP) through wireless communication and then transmitted to the control center. Each DAP installation incurs costs, but the number and locations of DAPs have an impact on the quality of communication services due to the distance between DAP and smart meters and the related transmission routes. Therefore, it is important to choose the best positions for installing DAPs in a smart meter network. This study investigates the DAP placement problem and proposes a solution to reduce the number of DAPs and the distance between DAPs and smart meters by using a grid-based model. Without loss of generality, simulations for performance evaluation are conducted based on random data. The simulation results show that the proposed solution can reduce the number of DAPs in a smart meter network.