A Markov-Modulated End-to-End Delay Analysis of Large-Scale RF Mesh Networks with Time-Slotted ALOHA and FHSS for Smart Grid Applications

A new mathematical model and methodology are proposed to evaluate the performance of large-scale RF-mesh networks that use time-slotted ALOHA with frequency hopping spread spectrum. This type of architecture is quite usual in advanced metering infrastructures. An analytic formulation for the delay, based on Markov-modulated modeling of the system, is derived. The formula can be extended to evaluate other important performance metrics. The proposed methodology is applied to a large scale network of several thousands of nodes, and numerical results are reported to show the wide variety of performance evaluations that are enabled. The usefulness of the assessment of the feasibility of different types of applications (e.g., smart-metering and sensor networks) is shown. An analysis of the scalability of this methodology and a comparison with simulation results are also presented.