Smart Grid networks use data collected from sensors in evaluating the current system state to make optimal resource distribution decisions and facilitate two-way energy exchange. Efficient and timely communication between smart grid assets using high efficiency and reliable Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) for the last-mile can play a significantly important role. For this requirement, wireless mesh networking can be used to offer scalable, flexible and resilient wireless connectivity. Despite significant advantages and tremendous applications, smart grid NANs are vulnerable to security and reliability issues during electric power delivery. After being compromised by an adversary, cascading-failure-induced disasters may disrupt the power grid from a remote location; customer’s private information may become vulnerable if accessed illegally; the adversary may also compromise selected nodes (change the normal behavior of a node to malicious behavior) and thus fail the critical mission of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. Moreover, the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) mechanism of IEEE 802.11e wireless technology can be leveraged for service differentiation based routing among flows of differing priorities. Routing decisions in mesh networks are based on routing metrics which have been the focus of research for the past decade. However, NANs offer a different implementation scenario from traditional mesh infrastructures and also necessitate the need for differentiated quality of service. In this paper, we discuss how state-of-the-art routing metrics have limitations for the NAN scenario, especially for EDCA based differentiated access. Moreover, we propose and design a secure and EDCA based contention-aware routing approach - iRoute, for 802.11e based wireless NANs which enables the selection of reliable routes that also satisfy QoS requirements (low contention, high throughput routes). Simulation-based performance evaluation of the proposed approach shows that it can provide significantly better performance in terms of throughput and delay for NAN communication.

智能电网网络使用从传感器收集的数据来评估当前系统状态，从而做出最佳的资源分配决策并促进双向能量交换。在最后一英里使用高效和可靠的邻域网（NAN），在智能电网资产之间进行高效及时的通信可以发挥重要作用。对于此要求，无线网状网络可用于提供可扩展的，灵活的和有弹性的无线连接。尽管有巨大的优势和巨大的应用，智能电网NAN在输电过程中仍容易受到安全性和可靠性问题的困扰。级联故障引发的灾难在受到对手的威胁后，可能会从远程位置中断电网。如果非法访问，客户的私人信息可能会变得脆弱；对手还可能危害选定的节点（将节点的正常行为更改为恶意行为），从而使监督控制和数据采集（SCADA）系统的关键任务失败。此外，可以利用IEEE 802.11e无线技术的增强型分布式信道访问（EDCA）机制在不同优先级的流之间进行基于服务区分的路由。网状网络中的路由决策基于路由指标，而路由指标一直是过去十年研究的重点。但是，NAN提供的实现方案不同于传统的网格基础架构，并且也有必要提供差异化​​的服务质量。在本文中，我们讨论了最新的路由指标如何限制NAN场景，特别是对于基于EDCA的差异访问。而且，iRoute，用于基于802.11e的无线NAN，它可以选择可靠的路由，这些路由也可以满足QoS要求（低竞争，高吞吐量路由）。提出的方法的基于仿真的性能评估表明，它可以在吞吐量和NAN通信的延迟方面提供显着更好的性能。