# Communication Protocol Design for IoT-Enabled Energy Management in a Smart Microgrid  
[PERSON]  
With the advent of information and communication technologies, the concept of ubiquitous connectivity among every possible device that we use in our day-to-day life has received significant attention from researchers and the broader community. Such ubiquitous connectivity among all intelligent devices is often denoted as the internet of things (IoT). A number of research papers have outlined the attributes and characteristics of IoT-enabled smart cities, where IoT has applications in different sectors, ranging from agriculture, health monitoring, transport systems, financial services, as well as energy systems [10; 11; 12; 13; 14]. The integration of intelligent control and communication technologies in power system operation is a critical parameter to realise the envisioned future of IoT-enabled smart cities. Thus, it can be predicted that the future power system will largely depend upon smart devices and advanced technologies, leading to a smart power system network. It goes without saying that a microgrid will need to comply with the features and requirements of a smart energy system, as microgrids are an essential component of the power system network. In a smart microgrid, the residential end-users will be equipped with intelligent home energy management systems (HEMSs), which can forward the energy generation and consumption information to a control centre or central EMS. Enabling HEMSs with IoT technology can allow for the advanced monitoring, control and energy management of a microgrid. In a microgrid where users are equipped with renewable energy resources, there could be certain time periods when some users have excess energy generated and some other users have an energy deficit. This is not an uncommon situation since renewable energy generation is intermittent and users' energy demand can depend on lifestyle patterns or weather conditions. In such cases, local (peer-to-peer) energy trading has evolved as a natural solution to satisfy the local demand with local generation [15; 16; 17; 18]. Local energy trading applications require energy generation/consumption information to be exchanged in real time, and hence, such applications would be much more effective when integrated with IoT technology. Existing research on IoT-enabled smart energy systems have focussed on energy management applications and the secure operation of the power system network. The authors in [19] have investigated a building management system with IoT-enabled smart buildings and discussed the key requirements for performing a number of different functions, including demand response and building surveillance. The authors in [20] have considered the optimum scheduling and energy efficient operation of an IoT-enabled smart city which has the features of wireless power transfer. The authors have elaborated the requirements of lightweight protocols, predictive models for energy forecast and context-aware energy management for smart energy systems. IoT-enabled wind energy systems that are capable of data acquisition, supervisory control and condition monitoring have been illustrated in [21]. The aforementioned research papers have mainly reviewed the requirements and expectations of the communication protocols required for an IoT-enabled microgrid. On the other hand, the authors in [22] have utilised the fog computing platform for energy management operations and defined the software, hardware and communication architecture for such IoT-enabled energy management systems. A communication scheme for blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading has been proposed by [23], where the authors investigate metadata exchange for energy transaction blocks. For real-time operation, the authors in [24] have proposed a software infrastructure to integrate the real-time energy profile and renewable generation data for scheduling applications in an IoT-enabled microgrid. This can be useful for obtaining the optimum control policies for building management.