Routing for Efficient Alarm Aggregation in Smart Grids: A Genetic Algorithm Approach.

Abstract We propose a Genetic Algorithm based routing scheme to maximize the number of alarm messages received at the sink node in a Wireless Sensor Network embedded in an electric power grid upon a fault/outage detection. In this scenario, sensor nodes rely on their scarce energy storage to operate and report alarm messages to the sink. Sensed data in neighboring nodes tend to be correlated. Therefore, nodes will send redundant data to the sink while wasting energy and congesting the network. In order to mitigate the energy waste and increase the message delivery rate, a data aggregation scheme is proposed.