Design of Weather-Resilient Satellite-Terrestrial ICT Networks for Power Grid Communications

Hybrid satellite-terrestrial communication networks can enhance the resilience of power grid communications. Recent advancements in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technologies have improved their ability to meet the communication requirements of power grid applications. However, the dynamic nature of LEO networks necessitates frequent routing updates, which can potentially disrupt the transmission of critical power grid monitoring and control data. Additionally, extreme weather events, such as severe rainfall, can impair both terrestrial and satellite communication links, posing risks to the operation of the power grid. This paper presents a two-phase methodology for reducing the need for frequent routing updates by identifying stable low-latency configurations of hybrid satellite-terrestrial communication networks for power grid applications. In the proactive phase, the deterministic dynamics of LEO satellite constellations are considered to generate a sequence of stable network configurations using fine-grained temporal snapshots and graph aggregation. The adaptive phase incorporates a dynamic regional weather model to update link capacities. A minimum-delay multi-commodity flow problem is solved to determine the best traffic distribution under given conditions. Simulation results show that hybrid networks with stable configurations can reduce network reconfiguration frequency by 92%. Compared to terrestrial-only networks, the hybrid network improves end-to-end delay by 65.5% and maintains approximately 80% connectivity even under extreme rainfall conditions.