Page 75 - 5G Basics - Core Network Aspects

Core network aspects 1

4) User B at home interrogates the smart meter regarding the energy consumption of home
appliances.
5) The smart meter responds to the request.

Figure 7-12 – Use case of advanced metering infrastructure
in a smart grid with DAN

1) A service provider subscribes to NDOs. The service provider additionally specifies processing policy
(e.g., aggregation and compression) that should be applied to the subscribed NDOs.
2) The end user publishes the NDOs.

3) The DAN network provider transfers the NDOs to end users on request.
4) The DAN network provider processes the NDOs based on the processing policy and forwards them
to the service provider.

7.6.1 Benefits
Due to the in-network caching and processing functions of DAN elements, utility companies can use the
network resource more efficiently in a way that data are distributed to the in-network caches where the data
can be processed according to the demands of consumers and utility companies. In this way, load in the
network can be balanced, which reduces the possibility of network congestion and the management cost of
heavily loaded network entities in a scalable manner. These benefits have been shown in [b-Yu, 2014]; see
also Appendix II.
Moreover, current implementations of AMI use either dedicated networks or the Internet via home routers.
The former can support reliable communication only for involved network operators, while requiring large
investment to build the network infrastructure. Although the latter is appreciated due to its economical
perspective, it requires customers to set up virtual private network (VPN) connections for reliable and secure
communications, which is troublesome. DAN secures data itself rather than a connection between two
communication entities, and the configurations of DAN home routers are universal or not site-dependent.
Thus, DAN discards the requirement of site-dependent VPN setup, and then enables a service provider to
deploy the AMI system over public networks like the Internet in a fast and economical manner without
concerns about securing the connections.

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