Optimal Relocation of Virtualized PDC in Edge-Cloud Architectures under Dynamic Latency Conditions

The increasing penetration of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) in the power grid, combined with the advancements in the communication technologies and the cloud-edge continuum, enable the deployment of sophisticated and demanding synchrophasor-based applications. In synchrophasor networks, Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs) are responsible for the collection, aggregation and time synchronization of PMU datasets and their transmission to the target applications according to specific latency constraints. PMU to PDC latency will be continuously impacted by the deployment of new applications, prone to violations of network related key performance indicators (KPIs). In this work, we present a cloud-edge architecture, which facilitates the continuous monitoring of the target application’s performance (Level of measurements Completeness - LoC) and provides an optimal PDC relocation solution through a binary integer linear programming algorithm. PDC relocation becomes feasible by the monitoring of the communication latency at points of interest and by the employment of virtual PDC instances at various nodes.