In this paper, we develop a real-time situational awareness framework for the electrical transmission power grid using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). While WSNs are capable of cost efficient monitoring over vast geographical areas, several technical challenges exist. The low power, low data rate devices cause bandwidth and latency bottlenecks. In this paper, our objective is to design a wireless network capable of real-time delivery of physical measurements for ideal preventive or corrective

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... trol action. For network design, we formulate an optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the installation and operational costs while satisfying the end-to-end latency and bandwidth constraints of the data flows. We study a hybrid hierarchical network architecture composed of a combination of wired, wireless and cellular technologies that can guarantee low cost real-time data monitoring. We formulate a placement problem to find the optimal location of cellular enabled transmission towers. Further, we present evaluation results of the optimization solution for diverse scenarios. Our formulation is generic and addresses real world scenarios with asymmetric sensor data generation, unreliable wireless link behavior, non-uniform cellular coverage, etc. Our analysis shows that a transmission line monitoring framework using WSN is indeed feasible using available technologies. Our results show that wireless link bandwidth can be a limiting factor for cost optimization. Index Terms-Cyber-physical network design, electric power grid, wireless sensor network.