A Network-in-the-Loop Framework to Analyze Cyber and Physical Information Flow in Smart Grids

The ability to capture the relation between cyber and physical information flow in the smart grid is necessary to understand the effect that each one has on the other. As such, the work in this paper presents a network-in-the-loop framework that formalizes the understanding of cyber information flow, the dynamic behavior of physical systems, and captures the interactions between them in smart grid applications. To that end, power system simulation software packages, embedded microcontrollers, and a real communication infrastructure are combined together to provide a cohesive smart grid cyber-physical platform. Within this framework, a data-centric communication middleware, with automatic network discovery, was selected to provide an interoperability layer between multivendor devices, software packages, and bridge different protocols together. The potential of the proposed framework was experimentally verified at the Smart Grid testbed at Florida International University.