An Optimal Scheduling Technique for Smart Grid Communications over 5G Networks

Abstract

The latest wireless network technology, Fifth Generation (5G) new radio (NR), is considered to be an emerging wireless network solution for smart grid (SG) communications owing to its ultra-reliable low latency and larger bandwidth properties. Packet scheduling is one of the mechanisms that plays a vital function in the performance of smart grid communications since it is highly responsible for the bandwidth resource allocation processes. The union of a scheduling approach and a beamforming technique can, however, boost the performance of multi-users in the communication system. Since 5G communication is not intended for smart grid communications, the performance of a scheduling approach must be properly utilized and effectively optimized. This paper evaluates and examines the Deadline Scheduling with Commitment (DSC) scheduling approach and further demonstrates that the performance of the popular Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduling approach can be richly enhanced by our modification and improvement of the approach. A novel Optimal Usage and Dropping Scheduling (OUD) approach for proper utilization and assigning of Resource Blocks (RBs) is also proposed to meet the stringent requirements of smart grid communications. Several performance indexes are employed to ascertain the performance of these scheduling approaches, and the results indicate that our proposed OUD approach shows a superior scheduling performance. It is concluded that 5G communications can be effectively employed in smart grids while utilizing the proposed OUD scheduling approach.