Centralized SDR-Based Performance Analytics Platform for Interoperable Smart Grid Communications with Renewable Energy Sources

Abstract

Smart grids with renewable energy sources require communication platforms that can evaluate heterogeneous links before field deployment. This article presents a centralized software-defined radio (SDR)-based performance analytics platform for physical/MAC-layer assessment of RF900, G3-PLC, GPRS CS2–CS3, hybrid PLC–GPRS, and renewable-event communication profiles. The platform combines a controlled UPS SDR/USRP experimental-simulation reference with reproducible packet-level simulations using traffic generation, channel impairment abstractions, CRC-based integrity verification, and centralized metrics: latency, bit error rate (BER), packet error rate (PER), useful throughput, and offered channel load. The revised evaluation uses a 120 s window, 3444 packets per baseline scenario, and 30 independent random seeds. The RF900 AWGN baseline achieved 36.58±0.01 ms mean latency, 1.78×10−4 BER, 0.175±0.003 PER, and 24.23 kbps useful throughput. Hybrid PLC–GPRS reduced PER to 0.025±0.001, while the renewable-event hybrid profile achieved 89.33±0.13 ms and 0.028±0.001 PER. This study provides a reproducible pre-deployment analytics framework, not full utility field validation or application-layer interoperability certification.