A Scalable FMI-Compatible Cosimulation Platform for Synchrophasor Network Studies

Abstract

Rigorous evaluation of a synchrophasor network in terms of communication network quality, cybersecurity, and phasor data concentrator (PDC) performance is presented. To this aim, a cosimulation platform is designed based on the multiagent environment for complex system cosimulation platform. The proposed platform is characterized by particular features including scalability (no limitation in terms of nodes/buses of communication/power systems), compatibility with the functional mock-up interface standard, and capability of synchronized integration of any two abstract simulators (in this article, NS-3 for communication network and MATLAB/Simulink for power system). The simulations are performed for the detailed model of the IEEE-34 bus distribution network including phasor measurement units and the PDC. The simulations include (1) evaluation of widely used synchrophasor communication technologies (i.e., user datagram protocol and transmission control protocol), (2) evaluation of the PDC performance under both relative and absolute wait time logics, and (3) assessment of cybersecurity vulnerabilities of the synchrophasor network. The proposed platform can be utilized for implementation and evaluation of communication technologies/protocols of synchrophasor networks in terms of bandwidth, packet missing, latency, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Data pushing mechanism of the PDC can be also evaluated using the proposed platform.