This paper surveys the literature related to the evolution of cellular communications as a key enabling technology for fundamental operations of smart grid neighborhood area networks (NANs). The latest releases of the LTE standard, representing the recent advancements in cellular technology, offer significant benefits to the modernization of the aging power distribution grid compared with other communication technologies. However, since LTE was not originally designed for smart grid applications, important challenges remain unsolved before it can efficiently support advanced NAN functionalities. This survey identifies the limitations of LTE and provides a comprehensive review of the most relevant proposed architectural and protocol enhancements for the communication infrastructure associated with smart grid NANs that can be found in the literature to date. As device-to-device (D2D) communications in LTE standards are a promising technology for reducing delay and boost reliability, this paper dwells on the potential gains that can be achieved by enabling direct communication using cellular networks, and also discusses in detail LTE-D2D applicability in representative NAN use cases in the power distribution grid. We conclude by stating open issues and providing research directions for future research in the field. This paper constitutes the first comprehensive survey of proposed LTE-enhancement and D2D solutions for smart grid NANs.

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