Distributed Optimal Dynamic Communication Paths Planning for PMUs in the WAMS Communication Network

The wide application of phasor measurement units (PMUs) increases the interdependence between the smart grid and wide-area measurement systems (WAMS). However, the end-to-end (ETE) delay that the data experienced from PMUs to the phasor data concentrator (PDC) has become non-negligible. A significant delay may affect the data completeness received by the PDC, thereby affecting the performance of the WAMS application, e.g., state estimation (SE). The previous research focuses on centralized path planning to mitigate the physical distance between PMUs and the PDC. Few studies have considered addressing the data completeness problem using the distributed algorithm from the aspect of the ETE delay. This article proposes a distributed bias min-consensus-based approach in path construction to minimize the ETE delay. Simulation results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach in addressing the data completeness and enhancing the SE performance. Also, it is computationally efficient in path reconstruction when the links suffer cyber-attacks.