A Hybrid Wired/Wireless Deterministic Network for Smart Grid

Abstract

With the rapid growth of time-critical applications in smart grid, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation, demand for high reliability, low latency and strictly bounded jitter is sharply increasing. High-precision time synchronization communications, such as Time Triggered Ethernet (TTE), have been successfully developed for wired networks. However, the high cost of deploying additional equipment and extra wiring limits the scalability of these networks. Therefore, in this article, a hybrid wired/wireless high-precision time synchronization network based on a combination of high-speed TTE and 5G Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) is proposed. The main motivation is to comply with the low latency, low jitter, and high reliability requirements of time critical applications, such as smart grid synchrophasor communications. Therefore, in the proposed hybrid network architecture, a high-speed TTE is considered as the main bus (i.e., backbone network), whereas a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) aided 5G-URLLC-based wireless access is used as a sub-network. The main challenge is to achieve interoperability between the PTP aided URLLC and the TTE, while ensuring high precision timing and synchronization. The simulation results demonstrate the impact of the PTP-aided URLLC in maintaining network reliability, latency, and jitter in full coordination with the TTE-network.