Secure and Scalable Network Slicing With Plug-and-Play Support for Power Distribution System Communication Networks

With the rapid development of power distribution systems (PDSs), the number of terminal devices and the types of delivered services involved are constantly growing. These trends make the operations of PDSs highly dependent on the support of advanced communication networks, which face two related challenges. The first is to provide sufficient flexibility, resilience, and security to meet varying demands and ensure the proper operation of gradually diversifying network services. The second is to realize the automatic identification of terminal devices, thus reducing the network maintenance burden. To solve these problems, this article presents a novel multiservice network integration and device authentication slice-based network slicing scheme. In this scheme, the integration of PDS communication networks enables network resource sharing, and recovery from communication interruption is achieved through network slicing in the integrated network. Authentication servers periodically poll terminal devices, adjusting network slice ranges based on authentication results, thereby facilitating dynamic network slicing. Additionally, secure plug-and-play support for PDS terminal devices and network protection are achieved through device identification and dynamic adjustment of network slices. On this basis, a network optimization and upgrading methodology for load balancing and robustness enhancement is further proposed. This approach is designed to improve the performance of PDS communication networks, adapting to ongoing PDS development and the evolution of PDS services. The simulation results show that the proposed schemes endow a PDS communication network with favorable resource utilization, fault recovery, terminal device plug-and-play support, load balancing, and improved network robustness.