DECT-2020 NR for Energy and Power Grid Substation QoS Monitoring Use Cases

Abstract

Modern power grids and industrial systems require scalable and reliable wireless connectivity to support real-time monitoring and control. DECT-2020 New Radio (NR), an ETSI-standardized wireless technology operating in license-exempt spectrum, offers native mesh networking, low latency, and flexible deployment for industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. This paper investigates the suitability of DECT-2020 NR mesh networking for power grid monitoring within the Ultra Scalable Wireless Access (USWA) project. Two proof-of-concept (PoC) deployments are evaluated, collecting data from multiple sensors under varying conditions, including packet fragmentation, multi-hop communication, and different data rates to assess the end-to-end performance of the system in terms of quality-of-service (QoS) metrics. From the results, we found that DECT-2020 NR shows potential for larger scale energy and substation monitoring deployments.