Finding Data Aggregation Locations in Smart Grids

The number and location of Data Aggregation Points (DAPs) will affect the smart meter neighborhood network's communication quality and cost. Because smart meters rely on wireless technology to transmit data, their transmission range is limited, so suburban and rural areas will require many DAP installation needs. It is essential to reduce the number of DAPs. For this problem, we propose a relay DAP placement scheme and propose corresponding algorithms to reduce the number of DAPs and avoid the large impact of relay DAP locations on communication quality. The test results verify that the proposed solution can reduce the number of DAPs and the effect of relay DAP locations on the communication quality.