ComSoc Technology News (CTN) is a free, online monthly publication that publishes interesting, timely, and newsworthy articles that span a wide range of topics related to the communications technology industry. Our mission is to be an informational resource that brings diverse perspective and thought leadership, while providing a platform for lively discussion amongst our readers.

CTN is run by a team of volunteer editorial board members who are technical experts in diverse fields. All articles are reviewed and edited by a technical editor. The editor-in-chief performs the final review prior to publication. 

April 2021 Issue

Smart Grid? Yes, AI Says: Bring It on!

Remember the days when power grid was just the wires to your home?  Have you had the pleasure of having an energy trader knock on your door or spam call your home?   Welcome to the world of “smart power distributions” or “smart grid”.  Smart grids can trade electricity with the consumers and that has become possible with the advent of advanced metering and sensing technologies, e.g., Industrial IoT, new distributed energy resources and ultra-ultra-reliable low latent 5G wireless communication. These smart grids can reduce or remove the carbon footprint against long-haul energy transmissions from national grids instead they meet the electricity demand locally through intelligent demand-supply matching algorithms or games. To deliver this vision, smart grid systems need ubiquitous, mission critical type connectivity solutions to estimate the energy demand accurately and make decisions in real time.

In this article, Melike provides an overview of the legacy power grid followed by evolution of smart grid and their emerging needs. Later, she presents the role of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and 5G communications that allow these smart grid and associated technologies to make real time decisions and trade electricity, meeting the demand locally. She argues that efficient physical layer techniques, such as joint resource block allocation and user association are required to ensure reasonable connectivity for microgrid and mobile users in the network.

Enjoy the article and send us your comments.

Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir, Editor

Miguel Dajer, Editor-in-Chief

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