A New Approach to Reliability Assessment and Improvement of Synchrophasor Communications in Smart Grids

Wireless communications can facilitate transfer of synchrophasor data between spatially separated phasor measurement units (PMUs) and phasor data concentrators (PDCs). However, such communication systems may impose random access delay and failure on PMU channels that lead to missing synchrophasor data frames at the output of the PDC. This paper presents a new approach for online reliability assessment and improvement of synchrophasor data communications. The proposed approach involves elaborate estimation and probabilistic prediction algorithms that trigger a prioritized handover mechanism in order to minimize the number of synchrophasor data frames that are missing over successive time stamps. Extensive simulations based on the LTE communications in a low-voltage distribution feeder confirm significant performance improvement and fast fault detection under the communication link failures. This non-intrusive approach can be adopted by network operators to ensure reliable transmission of synchrophasor data to monitoring, control, and protection applications in smart grids.