A Novel Strategy for Failure-tolerant Communication in Smart Grids

The goal of this paper is to present a robust survivability strategy for the communication network in smart grids when communication failure happens because (1) communication failure is inevitable, (2) communication failure can impact smart grid performance. A communication failure can be temporary or permanent. A temporary failure is often caused by electromagnetic interference, storms, obstructions, and other temporary factors while a permanent failure is usually due to terminal or transmitter breakdown. A communication failure causes temporary or permanent unavailability of the communication link. Thus, the message broadcasted from the sending device may never reach the intended receiving device. A simple but realistic strategy will be proposed to model communication failure in a smart grid simulation test bed. Then, a solution to overcome the communication failure will be presented. The strategy will be tested on the modified IEEE 34 node test feeder.