Performance Evaluation of EPON-Based Communication Network Architectures for Large-Scale Offshore Wind Power Farms

Abstract

In order to meet the growing demand of large-scale wind power farms (WPF), integration of high reliability, high speed, cost effectiveness and secure communication networks are needed. This paper proposes the Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) as one of promising candidates for next generation WPF. Critical communication network characteristics such as reliability, mean downtime, optical power budget, path loss and network cost are evaluated and compared with conventional switched-based architectures. The results show that our proposed EPON-based network architectures are superior to conventional switched-based architectures.