Scheduling of smart meter data access using Hungarian Algorithm

Smart meters plays a vital role in operating modern electricity distribution grids. They form the basis to execute smart grid functionalities such as monitoring and grid control. Measurements are done in specific time intervals and relies on bi-directional communication to exchange these information to a control center, utility or trading companies for billing. The access from these external actors are done via a centralized head-end system. Due to bandwidth constraints in communication, the head-end accesses multiple smart meters via so-called data concentrators, sequentially. Thus, the data moves in batches from concentrators to the head-end system. A key challenge here is to acquire all necessary data within a specific time interval. This paper addresses the scheduling of access to smart meters in such a way that it balances two processes: 1) access delays and 2) liveliness of the measured entity (the power load). To find out which order to pull smart meters is not trivial due to these two independent processes. In this paper we use a novel information centric quality metric, known as mismatch probability, to organize the access to the smart meter considering the two processes. Currently no proper assignment approach to access smart meter has been done, and only some heuristics exists. In order to find out the optimal (in terms of minimum mismatch probability) access sequence of sending smart meter data, we propose, in this paper, to use the Hungarian algorithm using the mismatch probability. Validation of proposed algorithm is done in Matlab. Results, based on experimental and theoretical analysis, show that Hungarian algorithm is a useful approach to address the access scheduling of smart meters.