Communication Constraints for Distributed Secondary Control of Heterogenous Microgrids: A Brief Survey

To identify the influence of communication constraints on the reliability and stability operation of heterogenous microgrids, this survey presents a comprehensive review and comparison of cyber-enabled distributed control techniques for microgrid's secondary control layer. Local controls of an unavailable state signal are calculated in a distributed and cooperative matter according to merely invoked cyber messages. Then, the recent developments in the communication constraints of distributed controlled microgrids are discussed. Specifically, the communication constraints (e.g., time-varying network topology, communication delay, noise disturbance, limited communication bandwidth, uncertainties of communication links) on the operation of the distributed controllers and the possible challenges are presented and compared. Finally, a short discussion section is contained to summarize the existing research and suggest some interesting research directions along with several open issues that are critical to further exploring the promising research area.