This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TETC.2017.2675911, IEEE
Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing
1

Big Data Acquisition under Failures in FiWi

Enhanced Smart Grid
Hongzhi Guo, Member, IEEE, Jiajia Liu, Senior Member, IEEE, and Lei Zhao

AbstractWith the increasing of monitoring devices and advanced measurement infrastructures, smart grids (SGs) collect large
amounts of data every moment, which gives rise to the SG big data. In order to fulfill diverse communication requirements of various
energy-related data in SG, it is obviously impractical to rely on a single communication technology, and a hybrid communication
architecture of low-latency fiber optic and cost-effective wireless technologies could be a promising solution. Note that, low-latency data
acquisition under failures is of particular importance to SG reliability, considering that SGs are vulnerable to various failures. Toward
this end, we provide in this paper a hybrid SG communication architecture integrating fiber optic and WiFi-based mesh networks, i.e.,
fiber-wireless (FiWi) enhanced SG, and study the problem of data acquisition under failures in FiWi enhanced SG. The problem is first
formulated as a constrained optimization problem, and then three algorithms are proposed as our solutions, i.e., an optimal
enumeration routing algorithm (OERA), a greedy approximation routing algorithm (GARA), and a heuristic greedy routing algorithm
(HGRA). Numerical results reveal that both GARA and HGRA can achieve near-optimal solutions to the problem of data acquisition
under failures, and have higher computational efficiency compared to our benchmark, i.e., OERA.

Index Termssmart grid, big data, fiber-wireless, FiWi, FiWi enhanced smart grid, low-latency, data acquisition, failure, sensor.

1 I NTRODUCTION ume feature of SG big data requires the backbone commu-

nications with high bandwidth, e.g., wired communications
Facing lots of challenges in terms of increasing electric
such as fiber optic networks, power line communications
power demands, environmental issues, frequent failures
(PLC), and digital subscriber lines (DSL), and wireless com-
and outages, security, integration with renewable energy
munications like WiMAX and cellular networks (3G/LTE).
sources, etc., existing power grids are undergoing an un-
To cope with diverse varieties of energy-related data from
precedented evolution and developing towards the modern
different kinds of devices, it is obviously not feasible to rely
smart grids (SGs) in these years [1], [2]. Compared to the
on one single communication technology. For example, the
traditional power grids, SGs can provide improved efficien-
data traffic in the home area networks (HANs) of a SG
cy, reliability, and security for the facilities and consumers,
prefers the communications with slow speed, low band-
via embedding two-way communication and information
width, and cost-efficiency, e.g., ZigBee, WiFi, HomePlug [7].
technologies with the power grid infrastructures.
While for the data traffic in the neighbor area networks
In order to control and monitor energy-related behav-
(NANs) of a SG, the communication technologies with
iors of the consumers and power facilities, a number of
low latency, high reliability and resilience, e.g., fiber optic
sensor-based devices are deployed in SG interconnected
networks, cellular networks, WiMAX, and wireless mesh
equipment, such as generators, power transformers, dis-
networks, could be promising candidates [3], [8]. Moreover,
tribution towers, etc [3], [4]. With the increasing of moni-
for the high velocity feature of SG big data, low latency
toring devices and advanced measurement infrastructures,
communications are required, especially under failures and
SGs collect large volumes of data every day from energy
power outages.
generators all the way to the consumers, which gives rise to
Overall, in order to fulfill various communication re-
the SG big data. Similar to the concept of big data, SG big
quirements of SG big data, a hybrid communication archi-
data exhibits the three basic characteristics of large volume,
tecture of low-latency fiber optic and cost-effective wireless
diverse variety, and high velocity, i.e., the big data three Vs.
technologies, i.e., hybrid fiber-wireless (FiWi) network, is be-
To deal with the SG big data, a plenty of research activ-
lieved to be a promising solution [9], [10]. By adopting FiWi
ities have emerged recently, ranging from data acquisition,
network to enhance SG communications, it gives rise to the
data storage, data management, data correlation analysis,
so-called FiWi enhanced SG [11], where fiber optic networks
etc. [5], [6]. Whereas, we note that few of them paid attention
are mainly adopted in the wide area networks (WANs) and
to the communication requirements of SG big data on the SG
wireless technologies are used in the communications of
communication infrastructures. In particular, the large vol-
both NANs and HANs.
It is noted that, as an essential infrastructure, SG, which
Hongzhi Guo and Lei Zhao are with the School of Cyber Engi- depends heavily on the physical infrastructures, is vul-
neering, Xidian University, Xian, Shaanxi, 710071, China. E-mail:
hzguo@xidian.edu.cn. nerable to various failures, e.g., short circuits, equipment
Jiajia Liu is with the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Services Networks, failures, physical attacks like electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
School of Cyber Engineering, Xidian University, Xian, Shaanxi, 710071, attacks as well as natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hur-
China. E-mail: liujiajia@xidian.edu.cn.
ricanes, floods, etc.) [12]. Once some failures happen and

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Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing
lead to ensuing power outages, especially when people are
sleeping or away from home, a large geographical area
might be out of touch. It is of significant importance to
collect and send up the status of the SG infrastructures
within the affected areas right after the failures. In this
case, we have to rely on remaining alive communication
networks to automatically collect the status data of the w-
hole SG, and report to the distribution management system
(DMS) of an underlying power grid, which takes charge
of monitoring and controlling of the whole distribution
networks. Obviously, the status data of remaining alive SG
infrastructures under failures should be sent to the DMS as
soon as possible, so that disaster relief and power restoration
can be conducted the first time. Therefore, low-latency data
acquisition is especially important for the SG under failures.
Toward this end, we provide in this paper a hybrid
architecture of FiWi enhanced SG, and study the problem
of data acquisition under failures in FiWi enhanced SG.
Three low-latency routing algorithms are presented as our
solutions, i.e., an optimal enumeration routing algorithm,
a greedy approximation routing algorithm, and a heuristic
greedy routing algorithm.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We
discuss some related work in Section 2. A hybrid archi-
tecture of FiWi enhanced SG is presented in Section 3. In
Section 4, we fist give some definitions, and then formulate
the problem of low-latency data acquisition under failures
in FiWi enhanced SG. After that three low-latency routing
algorithms are presented as our solutions. Moreover, Sec-
tion 5 gives some analysis and discussions of our proposed
algorithms, and Section 6 presents our numerical findings.
Finally, Section 7 concludes the whole paper.
2 R ELATED W ORK
As there are lots of monitoring devices and advanced mea-
surement equipment integrated in the power grid infras-
tructures, SG collects large amounts of power-related data
every day from these infrastructures. To address these large
amounts of data, big data computing for SG is particularly
important, and a number of research works have emerged
these years [5], [6], [13], [14]. Jiang et al. [15] reviewed recent
studies and developments on integrated architecture and
key enabling technologies of SG big data, including data
acquisition and storing, data correlation analysis, crowd-
sourced data control and data visualization. After that, they
further discussed security issues and presented a number
of potential applications and challenges in SG big data. To
address the randomness in system planning and operation
for integrating renewable energy sources, energy storage de-
vices, demand side management tools, and electric vehicles
in SG, Liang et al. [16] reviewed related works on stochastic
information management schemes for SG, where SG sys-
tem architecture and technical challenges in information
management, component-level modeling techniques, and
system-level stochastic information management schemes
for SG planning and operation, were discussed. Aiming to
apply big data technologies into SG, He et al. [17] proposed
a big data architecture based on random matrix theory,
where moving split-window technology and mean spectral
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2
radius were separately introduced for real-time analysis and
indicating data corrections.
With the growing volume, variety, and velocity of big
data in SG, different SG applications put forward diverse
communication requirements on the SG communication
infrastructures [4], [18], [19], [20], [21]. Gungor et al. [7]
reviewed related issues in SG architecture, including SG
communication architecture, key SG applications and their
communication requirements, and SG services roadmap. Li
et al. [22] presented an overview of the communication sys-
tem in cyber physical system (CPS) and SG, and introduced
a hybrid communication system framework to model CPS
with both continuous and discrete valued states. After that
they applied the hybrid framework into SG and good per-
formance was obtained there. Moreover, Yan et al. [23] first
studied the background, motivations, and major communi-
cation requirements of communication infrastructures in SG
systems, and then they further explored potential challenges
and issues for enabling SG communication infrastructures in
future.
Moreover, it is noted that among kinds of research works
in SG big data, such as data management, data storage,
data mining, etc., resilient and low-latency data acquisition
under failures is of great importance. The reason is that, SGs,
which rely heavily on physical electrical infrastructures, are
vulnerable to various failures. However, existing research
works in this area mostly focused on assessing reliability of
the networks [24], [25], [26], and little work can be found on
low-latency data acquisition of the status data of remaining
alive equipment under failures. In particular, in order to
identify the most vulnerable locations in wavelength divi-
sion multiplex (WDM) optical networks, Agarwal et al. [27]
proposed a probabilistic model for geographically correlat-
ed failures, where the failure probability of an optical fiber
link is defined as a nonincreasing function of its distance
from the epicenter. Efficient approximation algorithms were
presented there to find the most vulnerable locations in
the networks by adopting computational geometric tools.
Bernstein et al. [28] studied the power grid vulnerabili-
ty to geographically correlated failures, and presented a
direct-current (DC) power flow model to identify the most
vulnerable locations in the transmission network of the
power grid. Furthermore, to study network reliability under
randomly located geographical failures, Neumayer et al.
[29] developed tools using geometric probability to analyze
network connectivity under geographically correlated line
and disk failures, and proposed an algorithm to compute
the failure probabilities, the average two terminal reliability
of the network, and other network performance metrics in
polynomial time. Numerical results verified the promises of
their algorithm for modeling and designing more effective
networks under geographically correlated failures.
Compared to existing works, in order to fulfill diverse
communication requirements of different traffic in SG, we
present a hybrid architecture of fiber optic and wireless
mesh networks in this paper to enhance SG communication-
s, and explore the problem of low-latency data acquisition
under failures in FiWi enhanced SG.
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Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing
3

TABLE 1
Pros and cons of diverse communication technologies.

Category Technology Pros Cons

Low cost due to existing infrastructures, cost-
Low-bandwidth, low quality of signal, wiring distance
PLC effective, ubiquitous, widely available
limitation, susceptible to disturbances
Wired infrastructure, large coverage
communication Fiber optic High bandwidth, high reliability, large coverage,
Wiring distance limitation, high installation cost
technology networks immunity to disturbances, stable and mature
Low reliability, potential down time, distance dependency,
DSL Widespread availability, low cost, high bandwidth
lack of standardization, wiring distance limitation
Low cost, unlicensed spectrum, low power
ZigBee Low data rate, short range, susceptible to disturbances
consumption, secure and reliable mesh network
Low cost, unlicensed spectrum, widespread use,
WiFi Poor stability, security issues, high energy consumption
reliable mesh network, mature standards
Wireless Cellular Shared services of cellular networks with customer
Low cost due to existing infrastructures, stable,
communication networks market, not sufficiently stable and secure for mission-
widespread, large coverage, low maintenance cost
technology (3G/LTE) critical applications, costly spectrum fees
High reliability, scalability, and security, high Not widespread, tradeoff between long distance over
WiMAX
bandwidth high bitrates, user shared bandwidth
Wireless mesh High reliability and scalability, cost-effective, Low network capacity, signal fading, susceptible to
networks self-organization, load-balancing, large coverage interference, network optimization needed

3 A RCHITECTURE OF F I W I E NHANCED S MART
G RID
3.1 Comparisons of Available Communication Tech-
nologies for Smart Grids
Up to now, various communication technologies have been
considered to be implemented in SG communications. In
particular, PLC has the advantages of cost-efficiency, u-
biquity, and large coverage, but its disadvantages are low
bandwidth, low quality o signal, and wiring distance lim-
itation. Optical fiber networks are reliable and have the
advantages of high bandwidth, large coverage, and immu-
nity to disturbances, but they have a high installation cost.
Therefore fiber optic networks are more suitable for high
bandwidth backbone communications. Regarding wireless
communication technologies, ZigBee has been recommend-
ed as a promising communication standard for machine-to-
machine communications by the U.S. National Institute for
Standards and Technology (NIST), due to its characteristics
of low cost, unlicensed spectrum, low power consump-
tion, and mesh networking support. WiFi could be another
candidate for implementing NAN/HAN communications
since it is widely used and has the advantages of cost-
efficiency, unlicensed spectrum, reliable mesh networking
support. Cellular networks like 3G/LTE are also efficient
and cost-effective due to their existing infrastructures, large
coverage, and low maintenance cost. But these wireless
communication technologies also have their shortcomings,
e.g., ZigBee is susceptible to disturbances and has a low data
rate and a very short range. WiFi has the disadvantages of
poor stability and high power consumption, and cellular
networks are not stable and secure for mission-critical SG
applications since they provide shared services with cus-
tomer markets.
Obviously, it is impractical to rely on a single tech-
nology to fulfill diverse communication requirements in
SG communication infrastructures. A hybrid architecture of
wired and wireless communication technologies could be
a practical solution. To provide communication support for
different SG applications, Salvadori et al. [30] proposed a
hybrid network architecture combining wired communica-
tions like Ethernet, PLC, and controller area network (CAN),
and wireless sensor networks. Moreover, to cope with SG
communication bottlenecks from fast growing amount of
data, Jiang et al. [31] presented a distributed communication
architecture for SG applications, where narrowband PLC
(NB-PLC) and large-scale antenna arrays were adopted.
As summarized in Table 1, various communication tech-
nologies have their own pros and cons. In order to fulfill the
ever-increasing SG communication requirements on high
bandwidth, large coverage, low-latency, high reliability, a
hybrid architecture integrating fiber optic and WiFi-based
mesh networks could be a very promising candidate for
SG communications, although there have been a few net-
work architecture proposed these years. Specifically, it is
noted the cost of deploying optical fiber networks has been
considerably reduced with their widespread popularization,
and low-power WLAN technologies have being heavily
promoted in recent years [32]. Therefore, we adopt a hybrid
architecture of fiber optic and WiFi-based mesh networks
enhanced with fiber optic and wireless sensors for SG com-
munications in this paper, in consideration of SG commu-
nication requirements on low latency, high reliability, and
long-time use after deployment.
3.2 An Architecture for FiWi Enhanced Smart Grids
As depicted in Figure 1, our proposed FiWi enhanced SG
architecture is composed of two layers, i.e., the power grid
infrastructures and the SG communication infrastructures.
The layer of power grid infrastructures consists of power
plants, transmission substations, distribution substations,
and residential buildings, which are separately connected
via ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission lines, HV trans-
mission lines, and transmission lines. In order to monitor the
status of the power infrastructures such as the transformers,
power lines, distribution towers, breakers, switches, volt-
age regulators, etc., and control the power consumption
at homes, fiber optic and wireless sensors are deployed
throughout the transmission and distribution infrastruc-
tures at the power grids and customer premises [33].
The communication infrastructures of our proposed Fi-
Wi enhanced SG can generally be partitioned into three part-

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Fig. 1. Generic architecture of FiWi enhanced SG, including power grid infrastructures and SG communication infrastructures.

s, i.e., WAN, where optical fiber networks are implemented
for its communications, NAN, and HAN, both of which
adopt WiFi-based mesh networks as their communication
technologies. In particular, these three parts are responsible
for the communications of the power transmission grid,
the power distribution grid, and the customer premises in
the power grid infrastructures of a SG, respectively. We
adopt a time division multiplexing passive optical network
(TDM PON), i.e., IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet PON (EPON), as the
optical backhaul of FiWi enhanced SG communication in-
frastructures, due to its widespread popularization and cost-
effectiveness. In EPON, which adopts a tree-based topology,
the optical line terminal (OLT) located at the central office
(CO) serves as the root and connects to the DMS via fiber
lines. A number of hybrid interfaces, i.e., optical network
unit mesh portal points (ONU-MPPs), located at the premis-
es of residential/business subscribers, form the leaf nodes.
ONU-MPPs connect to the OLT via a 1 : N (1 : 32 or 1 :
64) splitter and serve as the gateways between WANs and
NANs. Besides EPON, Gigabit PON (GPON), 10G-EPON,
and XG-PON, which have higher data rates, can also be
used for implementing the WANs of FiWi enhanced SG
communication infrastructures. For the wireless front end of
FiWi enhanced SG, WMNs enhanced with WSs are adopted
due to their high reliability and low latency, where ONU-
MPPs connect the WMNs to the optical backhaul, and mesh
access points (MAPs) provide access services to the wireless
clients, e.g., wireless sensors (WSs). Besides, mesh points
(MPs) are placed to relay the data transmission between
MPPs and MAPs.
WSs, which are used to provide remote monitoring of
electrical devices and equipment fault detection, are placed
at the distribution substations / residential buildings or
deployed throughout the distribution lines. They directly
connect to the MAPs or constitute the WMNs in the wireless
front end of FiWi enhanced SG. They can be conventional
ZigBee or advanced IEEE 802.15.4-compliant devices, which
offer the data rates of up to 250 kbps or between 31.25 kbps
and 2 Mbps, respectively. Nevertheless, to reuse the existing
WiFi infrastructures and thus to reduce the capital and oper-
ating expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX), we adopt emerging
low-power sensors based on IEEE 802.11n for periodic and
urgent data transmission [32]. To monitor the temperature,
voltage and current of transmission/distribution equipmen-
t, fiber optic sensors (FOSs), such as low-cost fiber Bragg
grating (FBG) based sensors, are placed at the substations
of the power transmission grid or integrated into the fiber
lines of WANs by adopting multiplexing techniques like
TDM, and they can offer monitoring with high accuracy and
sensitivity, immunity to electromagnetic interference, and a
wide transmission range up to 100 km [34].
In a FiWi enhanced SG, WSs in the wireless front end
collect the status data of the power grid infrastructures in
the power distribution grid and customer premises, while
FOSs in the optical backhaul collect those in the power
transmission grid. These running state data of the whole SG
infrastructures can be transmitted to the DMS in real time
by adopting the FiWi communication network. Except for
monitoring the status of the power infrastructures, the FiWi
network can also be used for the DMS to control the power
consumption at customer premises.
4 DATA ACQUISITION UNDER FAILURES IN F I W I
E NHANCED S MART G RID
4.1 Problem Definition
In SG, the electricity power grids provide electricity supplies
for the communication infrastructures while the commu-
nication infrastructures control the electricity power grids.

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Obviously, there is a strong interdependency between the

electricity power grids and the SG communication infras-
tructures [24]. When failures happen, both the electricity
power grids and the communication infrastructure in the
failure areas tend to fail simultaneously. Therefore, im-
proving the reliability of the communication infrastructures
under failures will impose a direct effect on the reliability of
the whole SG.
Generally, the failures in communication networks can
be categorized into two groups, i.e., isolated failures (al-
so called independent failures), including random failures
like fiber cut, equipment break, etc., and correlated fail-
ures, where correlated failures can further be grouped into
several types [35], [36], such as time-correlated failures,
geographically correlated failures, cascading failures, etc.
To improve the reliability of the SG communication infras-
tructures, there have been lots of research works emerged
these years. Different from them, we focus on the problem
of data acquisition under failures in FiWi enhanced SG
in this paper. By solving this problem, the status data of Fig. 2. A routing example with TDMA mechanism adopted. In this
remaining alive sensor nodes could be uploaded to the DMS example, there are two routing choices, i.e., 1). v21 v11 DMS,
as soon as possible, so that the DMS could identify the v22 v11 DMS, v23 v11 DMS, v24 v12 DMS;
failure areas the first time, and following disaster relief and 2). v21 v11 DMS, v22 v11 DMS, v23 v12 DMS,
v24 v12 DMS. Since the information acquisition time of a father
power restoration could be performed so as to avoid more node depends on the uploading time of its child which takes the longest
cascading failures. transmission time, the routing in case 2 is obviously better than that in
To address the problem of data acquisition under failures case 1 (the maximum payload length on floor 1 in case 1 is 1000 while
that in case 2 is 800).
in FiWi enhanced SG, it is to minimize the overall uploading
time of remaining alive sensor nodes via choosing optimal
routing paths for each alive sensor node. Therefore, the consumption and latency. Therefore, we adopt TDMA as the
problem of data acquisition under failures can be converted channel access mechanism under failures in FiWi enhanced
to an optimal problem of low-latency routing of remaining SG.
alive sensor nodes under failures, which can be defined as As illustrated in Figure 2, if one node has multiple child
follows. nodes routing to it when adopting the TDMA mechanism,
Definition 1. Low-Latency Routing under Failures (LLRF): it should first wait until all the child nodes in the lower
For each alive sensor node under failures in FiWi en- layer have collected the status data of the nodes routing
hanced SG, given its height, its current conjoint sensor to them. The waiting time mainly depends on the child
nodes, and obtained status data of the network mon- node which has the longest uploading time. Note that the
itored by the sensor, the problem of LLRF is to find uploading time from a child node to its parent node is
the overall optimal routing paths from remaining alive proportional to its data size to be uploaded, i.e., the payload
sensor nodes to the DMS which have the overall shortest length, which can be calculated by adding its own payload
data uploading time under failures. length and the payload length of the nodes routed to it.
In order to minimize the overall data uploading time, we
It is noted that carrier sense multiple access with colli- should minimize the maximum waiting time of the nodes
sion avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism is usually adopted on floor one which directly connect to the DMS. To achieve
in wireless networks, such as HANs, since it has the advan- this, the payload length of the nodes in each floor should
tages of self-organization, high spectrum efficiency, and no be as balanced as possible. Therefore, the problem of LLRF
centralized control. But in SG failure scenarios, every alive defined in Definition 1 can be converted to the problem
sensor is eager to report its collected status data of small of minimizing the overall payload length under failures in
traffic volume. With the increasing number of accessing FiWi enhanced SG, which can be defined as follows.
devices, many sensors access the channel incessantly, and
Definition 2. Minimizing overall Payload Length under
CSMA/CA collapses. Most remaining sensors would not be
Failures (MPLF): For each alive sensor node under
able to upload their collected status data, and this would
failures in FiWi enhanced SG, given its height, payload
inevitably lead to very high latency. As a result, the DMS
length, and current conjoint sensor nodes, the problem
cannot acquire the status of the whole SG in first time,
of MPLF is to find the overall optimal routing paths
and thus CSMA/CA is not suitable for solving the prob-
from remaining alive sensor nodes to the DMS that
lem of low-latency data acquisition under failures in FiWi
minimize the maximum payload length of the nodes
enhanced SG. Note that EPON, i.e., the optical backhaul
directly routed to the DMS.
of our proposed FiWi enhanced SG network, adopts TDM
access (TDMA) as its channel access mechanism. Compared After we obtain the overall optimal routing paths under
to CSMA/CA, TDMA has higher channel utilization, espe- SG failures by solving the MPLF problem, the end-to-end
cially for a large number of accessing devices, lower energy delay can be easily calculated by adding up the maximum

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Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing
uploading time of each layer from the bottom layer to the
DMS. To facilitate description and simplify our analysis,
some notations and formulations are presented in the fol-
lowing section.
4.2 Problem Formulation
Let V = {v1 , v2 , ..., vNV } denote the set of remaining alive
sensor nodes under failures in FiWi enhanced SG communi-
cation infrastructures, where NV is the number of remaining
alive sensor nodes. The DMS is represented as vD , and
vD / V . vi V , fvi is the floor height of node vi , i.e.,
the hop counts from vi to vD , e.g., fvD = 0, and fvi = 1 if vi
directly connects to vD . f is the height of the network, i.e.,
the hop counts from the DMS to the leaf nodes. Moreover,
let Avi , Fvi , Bvi , and Hvi denote the sets of conjoint, parent,
brother, and child nodes of vi , respectively, vi V . For
any vi and vj in V , vj vi denotes that vj is directly routed
to vi after the overall routing paths have been determined.
The communication network of FiWi enhanced SG can
be represented by an undirected graph, G = (V, P, E),
where P denotes the set of payload length of remaining
alive sensor nodes, and E is the set of network links among
remaining alive sensor nodes. For any pi in P , pi is the
payload length of node vi , vi V , and pi is initialized
to be 100 bytes according to the event-driven data rates in
IEC61850 standard [37]. By adopting our following low-
latency routing algorithms, for any pi in P , pi can be
calculated as follows.
pi = pj , vi , vj V, (1)
vj vi
For any eij in E , eij = (vi , vj ) denotes that the nodes
vi and vj are conjoint nodes. Furthermore, for any vi that
directly connects to the DMS, i.e., vD , it can be represented
as e = (vi , vD ), vi vD .
Based on the above notations, the problem of MPLF
defined in Definition 2, which is to minimize the maximum
payload length of the sensor node directly connected to the
DMS, can be formulated as an optimization problem with
constraints as follows.
min(max pi )
s.t. e = (vi , vD ), vi vD ,
pD = pi ,
pi = pj , vi , vj V, 0 < i, j NV , (5)
vj vi
where pD is the overall payload length of remaining
alive sensor nodes except for those that cannot be routed
to the DMS, pi is the calculated payload length of vi that
directly connects to the DMS, and pj is the node that is
directly routed to vi by adopting our following low-latency
routing algorithms. For convenience, we use pmin to denote
min(max pi ), e = (vi , vD ), 0 < i NV .
To solve the problem of MPLF in FiWi enhanced SG, it
is to find the overall minimum covering set for the nodes
on floor one while all remaining alive sensor nodes that can
be routed to the DMS must be covered, where the covering
set of one node is the set of alive sensor nodes routed to
it. Therefore, the problem of MPLF can be converted to
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6
the classical Set Cover Problem (SCP), and the following
theorem can be easily obtained.
Theorem 1. The problem of MPLF in FiWi enhanced SG is
NP-hard.
Proof: As discussed above, the problem of MPLF is to
find the overall minimum covering set for the nodes that
directly connects to the DMS. It can be easily transformed to
the classical SCP, which is NP-hard. Therefore, the problem
of MPLF in FiWi enhanced SG is NP-hard.
4.3 Solutions
In order to address the MPLF problem in FiWi enhanced SG,
we present three solutions in this section, i.e., an optimal
enumeration routing algorithm (OERA), a greedy approxi-
mation routing algorithm (GARA), and a heuristic greedy
routing algorithm (HGRA).
4.3.1 An optimal enumeration routing algorithm
To solve the MPLF problem, the most intuitive method is
to enumerate all optional routing paths from every alive
sensor node to the DMS, and then to choose an optimal
combination of routing paths that minimizes the maximum
payload length of the nodes directly connected to the DMS.
The details of this enumeration method, i.e., OERA, are
described in Algorithm 1.
Algorithm 1 an optimal enumeration routing algorithm for
MPLF.
Input: f ; Avi , Fvi , fvi , pi , vi V, 0 < i NV .
Output: pmin , S - the set of overall routing paths of re-
maining alive sensor nodes, the end-to-end delay.
1: Initialize pmin = +, S = ; S denotes the set
of combinations of routing paths from remaining alive
sensor nodes to vD , S = , CAj S ;
2: rebuild the network topology of remaining alive sensor
nodes via adopting the breadth first algorithm and
update f , Avi , Fvi , fvi , vi V ;
3: enumerate all combinations of routing paths from re-
maining alive sensor nodes to vD , and record into the
set S ;
(2) 4: for all CAj S do
(3) 5: compute the minimum overall payload length of CAj
and record as pCAj ;
(4) 6: if pCAj < pmin then
7: pmin = pCAj ;
8: S = CAj ;
9: else
10: continue;
11: end if
12: end for
13: calculate the end-to-end delay;
14: return pmin , S , and the end-to-end delay.
For OERA in Algorithm 1, the following conclusion can
be easily proved.
Theorem 2. OERA in Algorithm 1 can find an optimal
solution to the MPLF problem in FiWi enhanced SG.
Proof: Since OERA traverses the whole solution space
and enumerates all combinations of routing paths from
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remaining alive sensor nodes to the DMS, it is obvious that
OERA in Algorithm 1 can find an optimal solution to the
MPLF problem.
Algorithm 2 a greedy approximation routing algorithm for
MPLF.
Input: f ; Avi , Fvi , fvi , pi , vi V, 0 < i NV .
Output: pmin , S - the set of overall routing paths of re-
maining alive sensor nodes, the end-to-end delay.
1: Initialize pmin = +, S = ; pi = 100 bytes, 0 < i
NV ; Cvi denotes the covering set of vi , Cvi = ; D =
E = AvD ; E = ;
4.3.2 A greedy approximation routing algorithm
As discussed above, the MPLF problem can be transformed
to the SCP, and the greedy algorithm can be adopted to
achieve an approximation solution to the SCP [38]. There-
fore, we present a greedy approximation solution to the
MPLF problem, i.e., GARA. In particular, the idea of GARA
is to find the minimum covering set for each alive sensor
node from the top floor to the bottom floor iteratively. Let
D and E separately denote the set of processed nodes at
present and the set of child nodes of the nodes on current
floor, where the processed node means that its routing path

2: for (i = 1; i f ; i + +) do has been calculated. E is a temporary set. The details of

3: for (j =1; i |E|; j + +) do GARA are presented in Algorithm 2.

4: E = (Aij D); For GARA in Algorithm 2, we have the following con-
5: end for clusion.

6: delete duplicates in E ; Theorem 3. GARA in Algorithm 2 can give a near-optimal

7: E=E ; solution to the MPLF problem in FiWi enhanced SG.
8: for vk E do
9: if (vl F vk &&|Fvk | == 1) then Proof: It is noted that we randomly choose some nodes
10: Cvl = {vk }; from Am in steps 24 and 27 of Algorithm 2, and selecting
11: D = {vk }; different nodes covered by vm will inevitably lead to differ-
12: else ent changes to the set Am of remaining nodes on current
13: continue; floor. For the node vm , we make locally optimal choices, but
14: end if we cannot guarantee that the combination of all selected
15: end for covered nodes by GARA is a globally optimal solution to
16: while |Cvij | < |E| do MPLF. Therefore, GARA in Algorithm 2 can only give a
17: sort vij on floor i according to |Cvij | and record as near-optimal solution to the MPLF problem.
G, nmax = max{|Cvij |};
18: for (m = 1; m |G|; m + +) do
19: Am = Am D; 4.3.3 A heuristic greedy routing algorithm
20: if |Am | == 0 then We note that it is a dynamic process to choose the covering
21: continue; nodes for vm , since selecting the nodes covered by vm will
22: else inevitably affect the selection of remaining nodes. In order
23: if |Am | < nmax then to address the dynamic changes in selecting covering nodes,
24: choose min(|Am |, (nmax |Cvm |)) nodes we further propose a heuristic greedy routing scheme, i.e.,
from Am and put them into Cvm and D; HGRA. Different from GARA, HGRA adopts a bottom to
25: else up process to select the routes of every alive node. That is,
26: if Am = then beginning from the bottom floor, each alive node iteratively
27: choose one node from Am and put it into makes greedy choices to select the ones with the lowest pay-
Cvm and D; load length from its conjoint nodes as its routes. This process
28: else proceeds until it reaches vD . Let D denote a temporary set.
29: continue; The details of HGRA are described in Algorithm 3.
30: end if For HGRA in Algorithm 3, the following conclusion can
31: end if be easily proved.
32: end if
33: end for Theorem 4. HGRA in Algorithm 3 can give a near-optimal
34: end while solution to the MPLF problem in FiWi enhanced SG.
35: end for
36: calculate pmin and build S according to obtained cover- Proof: Regarding steps 16 - 20 of in Algorithm 3, if
ing sets of remaining alive sensor nodes; several nodes in current floor have the same payload length,
37: calculate the end-to-end delay; we randomly choose any of them to calculate its route.
38: return pmin , S , and the end-to-end delay. The choice will inevitably affects the routing selection of
the nodes to be processed. Locally optimal choices cannot
OERA in Algorithm 1 is very simple and effective, but guarantee a globally optimal solution to the MPLF problem.
it has a very high computational complexity since OERA Therefore, HGRA in Algorithm 3 can only give a near-
has to enumerate all combinations of routing paths from optimal solution to the MPLF problem.
remaining alive sensor nodes to the DMS so as to find the Compared to OERA, although GARA and HGRA are a
overall minimum payload length, i.e., pmin . More details on little more complex and cannot give an optimal solution
the computational complexity of OERA will be discussed in to the MPLF problem, both of them have much higher
Section 5. computational efficiency than OERA.

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Algorithm 3 a heuristic greedy routing algorithm for MPLF. in Algorithm 1 can be calculated by adding them up, i.e.,
Input: f ; Avi , Fvi , fvi , pi , vi V, 0 < i NV . O(nn ).
Output: pmin , S - the set of overall routing paths of re- Due to its high computational complexity, OERA can
maining alive sensor nodes, the end-to-end delay. only run with a very small number of sensor nodes and is
1: Initialize pmin = +, S = ; pi = 100 bytes, 0 < i impractical in practice with a large number of sensor nodes
NV ; D = ; in FiWi enhanced SG. Thus, we propose OERA in this paper
2: for (i = f ; i > 0; i + +) do just to present a benchmark for the performance evaluation
3: for any node vij on floor i do of our GARA and HGRA.
4: if |Fvij | == 0 then
5: execute the backtracking procedure in Proce- Procedure 1 a backtracking procedure.
dure 1. 1: if Avij == then
6: else 2: continue;
7: if (vk Fvij &&|Fvij | == 1) then 3: else
8: vij vk ; 4: if Bvij = then
9: pvk + = pvij ; 5: choose any node vn from Bvij ;
10: else 6: vij vn ;
11: continue; 7: pvn + = pvij ;
12: end if 8: else
13: end if 9: for vp Hvij do
14: end for 10: if (Fvp {vij }) = then
15: sort vij on floor i according to their payload length 11: vij vp ;
and record into D; 12: pvp + = pvij ;
16: for (l = |D|; l > 0; l ) do 13: else
17: choose vm with the lowest payload length from Fvl ; 14: record vp as an impracticable route;
18: vl vm ; 15: call Procedure 1 on vp iteratively;
19: pvm + = pvl ; 16: end if
20: end for 17: end for
21: end for 18: end if
22: select the maximum payload length of the nodes on 19: end if
floor one and record as pmin ;
23: construct S based on previously calculated routing path- Compared to OERA, both GARA and HGRA have a
s; bigger advantage on computational efficiency. In particular,
24: calculate the end-to-end delay; the following conclusion can be easily proved for GARA.
25: return pmin , S , and the end-to-end delay.
Theorem 6. The computational complexity of GARA in
Algorithm 2 is O(n2 log n) (log n denotes log2 n unless
otherwise specified).
5 A NALYSIS AND D ISCUSSIONS
Proof: GARA in Algorithm 2 mainly contains two parts,
As discussed above, OERA is simple and can give an
i.e., the for loop from step 2 to step 35 using for finding the
optimal solution to the MPLF problem, but it has a very
covering set of each alive sensor node, and step 36 using
high computational complexity. The upper bound of its
for calculating pmin and S based on the calculated covering
computational complexity is presented as follows.
sets. Specifically, for steps 2 - 35, the outer for loop runs for
Theorem 5. The computational complexity of OERA in f times. The inner for loop of steps 3 - 5 runs for an |E|
Algorithm 1 is O(nn ), where n denotes the number time, where E denotes the set of nodes on next lower floor.
of remaining alive sensor nodes in FiWi enhanced SG By adding them up, it is to traverse all alive nodes in the
communication infrastructures. network for steps 3 - 5, and its running time is O(n). Step 6,

Proof: The OERA in Algorithm 1 mainly contains three which is adopted to delete duplicates in the set E , runs at

parts, i.e., rebuilding network topology under failures in most n log n times via sorting the elements in E first. For
step 2, enumerating all combinations of routing paths for steps 8 - 15, the for loop runs at most |E| times, the inner
remaining alive sensor nodes in step 3, and computing steps 9 - 14 runs for an O(1) time, and thus the running
pmin and S based on the combinations of routing paths time of steps 8 - 15 is O(n). Regarding the while loop of
in steps 4 - 12. In particular, the running time of step 2 steps 16 - 34, the running time of the outer while loop is
is O(NV + |E|) = O(n), where n denotes the number O(|E|). Step 17 runs for an O(|G| log |G|) time, where G is
of remaining alive sensor nodes under failures in FiWi the set of nodes on current floor. The running time of the
enhanced SG. For step 3, there are at most n i choices for loop of steps 18 - 33 is O(|G|), and the steps from 19 to
for any alive node vi ( vi V, 0 < i n) to select its 32 runs for an O(1) time. Thus, the running time of steps
routing path to vD , and thus the time complexity of step 16 - 34 can be calculated by adding up these two parts, i.e.,
3 is O(nn ). Regarding the forall loop of steps 4 - 12, the O(f |E|(|G| log |G| + |G|)) = O(n2 log n). After that the
outer loop of step 4 runs at most nn times and steps 5 - 11 running time of steps 2 - 35 can be obtained, i.e., O(n +
runs for an O(1) time, and thus the running time of steps n log n + n + n2 log n)) = O(n2 log n). The running time
4 - 12 is O(nn ). Finally, the whole running time of OERA of step 36 is O(n). Finally, the running time of GARA can

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TABLE 2
Parameter settings in the experiments. 600 OERA
GARA
HGRA
500
notation description value and unit
pi initial payload length of any vi 100 bytes
n number of sensor nodes 5 170 400

pmin (bytes)
f height of FiWi communication network 2 13
NF number of failure nodes 18 300
NON U number of ONUs 8
200

be calculated by adding them up, i.e., O(n log n + n) = 2

100
O(n2 log n).
Compared to the classical GARA, HGRA in Algorithm 3 0
takes the dynamic changes in selecting the routes of vi (vi 2 3 4 5 6

V, 0 < i NV ) into account, and it is expected to obtain Number of ONUs

a better solution beyond GARA. In order to calculate the (a) Comparisons of the overall minimum payload
computational complexity of HGRA, we should figure out length (i.e., pmin ) among OERA, GARA, and HGRA.
the running time of Procedure 1 first.
Lemma 1. The computational complexity of the backtracking OERA
GARA
procedure in Procedure 1 is O(n). 0.03 HGRA

Proof: It is noted that the backtracking procedure in

Procedure 1 is adopted to find the routes of the node vi
(vi V, 0 < i NV ) whose parent nodes fail. This

Delay (ms)
0.02

procedure tries to traverse the conjoint nodes of vi to find

a route node which has an alive parent node at the next
higher floor. For Procedure 1, it only leads to two cases, i.e.,
the route node existed in its brother/child nodes or not. In
the first case, the time complexity of Procedure 1 can be
calculated by adding up the running time of steps 4 - 12,
i.e., O(n). Otherwise, Procedure 1 perform steps 1 - 2 or
recursively call itself in steps 14 - 15, and it runs at most n
times. Overall, the running time of Procedure 1 is O(n).
Base on Lemma 1, the computational complexity of
HGRA in Algorithm 3 can be easily obtained.
Theorem 7. The computational complexity of HGRA in
Algorithm 3 is O(n2 ).
Proof: The running time of HGRA in Algorithm 3 is
comprised of two parts, i.e., the for loop from step 2 to
step 21, and the steps 22 and 23. In particular, the outer
for loop of steps 2 - 21 runs at most f times. For the for
loop of steps 3 - 14, its computational complexity mainly
depends on step 5. Note that step 5 at most traverses all
remaining alive nodes to find the route of vij , and thus
its running time is O(n). By adding up the running time
of all nodes, the time complexity of steps 3 - 14 can be
easily obtained, i.e., O(n n) = O(n2 ). Moreover, the time
complexity of step 15 is O(n log n). For steps 16 - 20, which
are adopted to find the parent node of vl with the lowest
payload length, the outer for loop runs at most n times,
and the inner step 17 runs for an O(n) time. Therefore, the
running time of steps 16 - 20 is O(n2 ). Furthermore, steps
22 and 23 separately run for an O(1) and O(n) time. Finally,
the time complexity of HGRA can be calculated by adding
them up, i.e., O(n2 + n log n + n2 + n) = O(n2 ).
6 P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
6.1 Parameter Settings
Without loss of generality, we adopt a FiWi communication
network for implementing FiWi enhanced SG communica-
tion infrastructures, which consists of 1 OLT and a number
0.01
0.00
2 3 4 5 6
Number of ONUs
(b) Comparisons of the end-to-end delay among
OERA, GARA, and HGRA.
Fig. 3. Illustration of numerical results of pmin and the end-to-end delay
with different number of ONUs, where the number of failure nodes (i.e.,
NF ) is set as 1.
of ONU-MPPs in the optical backhaul, and a WMN in
the wireless front end. During our experiments, we found
that when the height of the communication network is
fixed, the number of sensor nodes is nearly proportional
to the number of ONU-MPPs. As illustrated in Figure 3, the
calculated overall minimum payload length (i.e., pmin ) and
the end-to-end delay changed very little with the increasing
number of ONU-MPPs, where the data rate in IEEE 802.11n-
based mesh network is fixed to 144 Mb/s. Thus, without
loss of generality, the number of ONU-MPPs, i.e., NON U , is
set to 8 in our following experiments. The total number of
sensor nodes, i.e., n, ranges from 5 to 170, and the height of
the communication network, i.e., f , is set between 2 and 13.
During our experiments, we randomly choose some of the
sensor nodes from floor 2 to floor 13 as the failure nodes,
and the number of failure nodes, i.e., NF , is set between 1
and 8. Furthermore, A Ubuntu 14 64 bit operating system in
an Intel i5 core computer with 4 GB RAM is adopted as our
experiment platform. Table 2 lists the parameter settings in
our experiments.

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6.2 Numerical Results

1500 OERA
In order to validate that both GARA and HGRA can give GARA
a near-optimal solution to the MPLF problem, we make HGRA
comparisons of the overall minimum payload length, i.e.,
pmin , among OERA, GARA, and HGRA with different 1000

pmin (bytes)
number of sensor nodes. In this simulation, OERA, which
is able to give an optimal solution to MPLF, is adopted as
our benchmark, and the number of failure nodes, i.e., NF , is 500
set as 1. Figure 4(a) depicts the comparison results of pmin
among OERA, GARA, and HGRA, where the X-axis denotes
the total number of sensor nodes, i.e., n, and the Y-axis is
0
the calculated overall minimum payload length pmin . Since 5 10 15 20 25
OERA can only run with a very small number of sensor Number of nodes
nodes due to its exponential computational complexity, the (a) Comparisons of pmin among OERA, GARA, and
number of ONUs in this experiment is fixed to 2. From Fig- HGRA.
ure 4(a), it can be observed that both GARA and HGRA can
0.25
give near-optimal solutions to MPLF compared to OERA,
where Theorems 3 and 4 are validated. In particular, HGRA OERA
GARA
can obtain better solutions to MPLF than GARA, since 0.20
HGRA
HGRA introduces a dynamic process to select the route of
each alive sensor node. Comparison results of the end-to- 0.15

Delay (ms)
end delay among OERA, GARA, and HGRA in Figure 4(b)
present the similar conclusions with those of the overall
0.10
minimum payload length.
Figure 5 illustrates the comparison results of the running
time among OERA, GARA, and HGRA with different n 0.05
settings, where a failure node was randomly selected from
the sensor nodes on floors 2 - 6, i.e., NF = 1. As depicted in 0.00
Figure 5, the running time of OERA grows sharply while 5 10 15 20 25
those of GARA and HGRA increase smoothly, and this Number of nodes
verifies our analysis in Section 5 that OERA can only run (b) Comparisons of the end-to-end delay among
with a very small number of sensor nodes and is impractical OERA, GARA, and HGRA.
in practice with a large number of sensor nodes in FiWi
enhanced SG. Fig. 4. Illustration of numerical results of pmin and the end-to-end delay
with different number of sensor nodes, where NF is set as 1.
From above experiments, we can see that although OER-
A can give an optimal solution to MPLF, it is unacceptable 5000
in practice due to its exponential computational complexity. OERA
Rather, although GARA and HGRA can only give near- GARA
4000
optimal solutions to MPLF, both of them have very higher HGRA
computational efficiency than OERA, and thus they provide
Running time (ms)

workable solutions to the MPLF problem in FiWi enhanced 3000 100

SG.
Running time (ms)

80
In the following, we make some further comparisons 2000 60

between GARA and HGRA. Figure 6 illustrates the com- 40

parison results of pmin and the end-to-end delay between 20

1000
GARA and HGRA with different n settings, where the cases 0
5 10 15 20
with NF = 1 and NF = 8 were separately tested. Number of nodes
0
From Figure 6(a), one can easily observe that with the 5 10 15 20 25
same NF setting, the overall minimum payload length of Number of nodes
HGRA is lower than that of GARA. Similar conclusion can
be obtained from Figure 6(b), that is, HGRA can achieve Fig. 5. Comparisons of the running time among OERA, GARA, and
a better performance rather than GARA in addressing the HGRA, where NF is set as 1.
problem of data acquisition under failures in FiWi enhanced
SG. Besides, it can be observed from Figure 6 that both the
6.3 Discussions
overall minimum payload length and the end-to-end delay
of GARA and HGRA increase with more failure nodes. To During our experiments, we note that the running time of
validate this, we carried out more simulation and found that both GARA and HGRA increases at a near-linear trend,
this rule keeps until too many sensor nodes fail. However, which doesnt closely approximate the theoretical analysis
the inflection point cannot be easily determined due to concluded in Section 5. By further analysis, we find this is
randomly failed sensors. because that the sorting steps in both GARA and HGRA

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9000 to present an overall data acquisition strategy under failures

GARA, NF=1 in FiWi enhanced SG.
7500
HGRA, NF=1
GARA, NF=8
6000 HGRA, NF=8
7 C ONCLUSION
In order to fulfill diverse communication requirements in
pmin (bytes)

4500 SG big data, this paper presented a hybrid communication

architecture integrating fiber optic and WiFi-based mesh
3000
networks. Based on the FiWi enhanced SG communication
architecture, we investigated the problem of data acquisi-
1500
tion under failure in SG, and proposed two solutions, i.e.,
GARA, and HGRA. Numerical results corroborated that
0
35 55 75 95 115 135 155 both GARA and HGRA can obtain near-optimal solutions
Number of nodes and have much higher computational efficiency, compared
(a) Comparisons of pmin between GARA and H- to our benchmark, i.e., OERA. Furthermore, HGRA can give
GRA. a better solution rather than GARA. For future works, it
should be meaning to take more channel access mechanisms
2.5
into account and design corresponding solutions.
GARA, NF=1
2.0 HGRA, NF=1
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