Field-Programmable Analog Array Based Distance Relay

Protective relays have been designed with different technologies resulting in electromechanical, solid-state, and numerical devices. Speed and reliability are the two most important characteristics of a protective relay. Other capabilities such as monitoring and recording are supposed to be of secondary priority. Without any doubt, present-day numerical relays provide considerable capabilities and advantages but they have not improved speed of operation in comparison to their solid-state counterparts. With advancements in analog technology which has become more mature recently, the idea of using mixed signals in several applications has started. The new technology using combination of field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs) and digital technologies seems to be a breakthrough and has the potential to provide better performance than the present-day numerical relays. In this paper, use of FPAAs for designing and implementing protective relays is investigated for the first time in literature. A distance relay design and its hardware implementation using FPAAs is described. Test results are reported.