Stochastic Characterization-Based Performance Analysis of an Emulated Communication Network for Cyber- Physical Shipboard Power Systems

Emerging advanced and innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), automation strategies, and associated algorithms in the traditional power system have transformed it into a Cyber-Physical Power System (CPPS). Energy management and control are crucial in the Shipboard Power System operation. For instance, to meet the ship's energy and other ancillary demands, especially the mission-critical loads that require practical and secure network communication. Therefore, a comprehensive modeling and testing and validation approach was developed in this paper. This enables flexible system-level aspect evaluation through numerous experiments, including virtual, real, and mixed lab settings. This paper presents a scalable and flexible three-layer cyber-physical co-simulation platform implemented in the FIU smart grid testbed. This includes real-time power system simulation using OPAL-RT, ns3 for communication network emulation, and MATLAB/SIMULINK for implementing various applications. To demonstrate the platform's effective operation, energy management with a central controller for SPS was configured and implemented to test the communication network performance by creating tools to characterize the network latency for this application.