Dynamic Multicast Routing Management for Robust Wide Area Power Grid Communication

Abstract

High-volume synchrophasor data generated by wide area measurement system (WAMS) presents new challenges for the design of scalable and robust communication architectures suitable for large-scale deployment in power grid monitoring and control applications. Features of information and communication technology (ICT) can be harnessed to devise a more flexible infrastructure than the conventional unicast-based hierarchical architecture. Multicast has been suggested as a potential solution for scalability issues in the current WAMS architecture. This paper proposes a decentralized dynamic multicast routing management algorithm that manages network traffic efficiently, improves scalability, and makes the system resilient to component failures. The algorithm models creation of alternate links as a stochastic process using random-graph theory and manages connections between end hosts at the session layer. This protocol can be implemented using existing ICT protocols with minimal cost. Numerical simulations show that the proposed algorithm improves the topological efficiency and resilience of the network.