Application Protocols of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for Smart Grid Applications

Wireless Sensor Networks are one of the enabling technologies to realize the next generation electrical power grid called "Smart Grid". Smart Grid provides the facility to integrate the advancement of information and communication technology with sensor technology to make the grid really smart, robust and adaptive. In spite of all these advancement, it is the application protocol that makes the technology useful to the end user either human or machine. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the internet's de'facto application protocol is not efficient for WSN based smart grid applications due to bandwidth and energy inefficiency. Constraint Application Protocol (CoAP) and Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) are two candidate application protocols that can be used for smart grid application. In this Paper, We compare these three protocols applicability for smart grid application.