IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 30, NO.
5, OCTOBER 2015
Analytical Modeling of Traffic Flow in the
Substation Communication Network
Yanxu Zhang, Zexiang Cai, Xiaohua Li, and Ruiwen He
Abstract—A custom-designed and well-monitored substation
communication network (SCN) can maintain fast and reliable
information transmission and lead to improved operation and
management of a substation automation system (SAS). In order to
achieve this goal, a traffic-flow model, including a port connection
model, a traffic-flow source model, and a traffic-flow service model
of an SCN is developed in this paper. Based on the traffic-flow
model, a traffic-flow calculation algorithm is designed to obtain
the distribution of traffic load and maximum message delay. In
order to verify the accuracy of the proposed method, the SCN of
a simplified substation is established in the laboratory. And the
distribution of traffic load and maximum message delay calculated
using the proposed method are compared to that measured by
a network analyzer. Furthermore, possible applications, such
as network device selection, network performance analysis, and
sensitivity analysis of the proposed method are demonstrated
based on a typical 220-kV substation.
Index Terms—IEC 61850, maximum message delay distribution,
substation automation system (SAS), traffic-flow analytical model,
traffic load distribution.
I. INTRODUCTION
A SUBSTATION is a crucial node of electric power systems
for energy conversion. A substation automation system
(SAS) is dedicated to the monitoring, control, and protection of
primary equipment in substations and their associated feeders
[1]. IEC 61850 recommends replacing the complex and long
copper wiring with an Ethernet-based communication network
to transmit information in an SAS. So SAS is becoming in-
creasingly dependent on substation communication networks
(SCN) for monitoring, control, and protection [2]. Building a
custom-designed and well-monitored SCN can help to maintain
the fast and reliable information transmission and lead to im-
proved operation and management of SAS. In order to achieve
this goal, it is important to develop reliable SCN models and
evaluate network performance under different network condi-
tions and analyze network performance requirements of SCN.
Manuscript received April 03, 2014; revised July 28, 2014; accepted
November 21, 2014. Date of publication December 05, 2014; date of cur-
rent version September 21, 2015. This research is supported in part by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51377026 and
in part by the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant
S2013010012885. Paper no. TPWRD-00375-2014.
Y. Zhang, Z. Cai, and X. Li are with the School of Electric Power Engi-
neering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
(e-mail: zhangyxleo@gmail.com).
R. He is with the School of Automation, Guangdong University of Tech-
nology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2014.2377475
0885-8977 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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2119
The performance requirements of all types of messages
in an SCN are specified in the 13th clause of IEC 61850–5.
Ingram et al. [3] presented a technique based on a precision
Ethernet capture card to analyze the performance of a process
bus network, especially time synchronization behaviors and
the performance of a merging unit (MU). But many complex
experiments are required to analyze an SCN using this tech-
nique. In recent years, a significant amount of research has
been undertaken for SCN modeling and network performance
analysis. Skeie et al. [1] set up a simulation model on the opti-
mized network engineering tool (OPNET) modeler platform to
demonstrate that Ethernet has satisfactory performance to meet
the real-time demands of SCN. Sidhu et al.. [4] constructed
an intelligent electronic device (IED) model in SCNs and de-
veloped a research platform to evaluate the performance of an
SCN using the OPNET modeler. Thomas et al.. [2] constructed
an SCN model on the OPNET modeler to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the SCN architecture proposed in [2]. However, when
the models based on the OPNET modeler are used to evaluate
the network performance of a real SCN under different network
conditions, it is time-consuming due to the heavy computing
burden and the complexity of modeling. Besides, the influence
of network parameters on the network performance cannot be
identified clearly through such simulations, which makes it
difficult to find out the key network parameters to optimize
the network performance, and the SCN design improvement
becomes aimless and complex. Moreover, though, the message
delay can be simulated and the maximum delay of important
messages is difficult to obtain using the models based on the
OPNET, which is very important in SCN design.
Different from before, this paper proposes an analytical
model of traffic flow of SCN, where the traffic flow means a
sequence of messages from a source device to a destination. In
an electric power system, the load-flow calculation is normally
used to obtain the distribution of voltage, voltage angles, real
power, and reactive power of a power grid. Similar to the load
flow, the traffic-flow calculation based on the proposed analyt-
ical traffic-flow model can be applied to obtain the distribution
of traffic load, maximum message delay, etc.
When designing an SCN, the performance of the SCN can
be evaluated based on the maximum message delay and traffic
load distribution under different network schemes and equip-
ment selections, and a design plan can be improved according
to evaluation results. For example, switches with high traffic
load can be found out by calculating the traffic load distribu-
tion, the redundant configuration of which can increase the re-
liability of information transmission. A sensitivity analysis for
the maximum message delay can help find out key network pa-
 2120
Fig. 1. General structure of an SCN.
rameters for the optimization of network performance. For an
SCN in operation, traffic load characteristics can be obtained by
calculating the traffic load distribution under different network
conditions. These characteristics are the basis for detecting and
locating a network fault of a network monitoring system. While
this paper focuses on the traffic flow in an SCN, the proposed
model is also applicable to smart-grid communication systems
based on further studies.
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section II pro-
poses the port connection model of an SCN. The source model
and the service model of traffic flow are developed in Section III.
Section IV presents the traffic-flow calculation algorithm. Dif-
ferent network conditions are analyzed in Section V. Section VI
presents case studies, followed by the conclusion in Section VII.
II. PORT CONNECTION MODEL OF AN SCN
A. General Structure of SCN
As shown in Fig. 1, a typical SCN consists of two parts: 1) a
process bus network and 2) a station bus network [5], [6].
A process bus network typically carries a sampled value
(SV) (defined in IEC 61850–9-2), generic object-oriented
substation events (GOOSE) (defined in IEC 61850–8-1), and
often manufacturing message speciïnacation (MMS) (defined
in IEC 61850–8-1) messages [7]. In addition, precision time
protocol (PTP) messages (defined in IEEE Standard 1588)
exist, synchronizing sample values in the process bus network
[8]. SV, GOOSE, and PTP messages all use the connectionless
multicast (one to many) transmission. And virtual local-area
networks (VLANs) are often used to limit the broadcast domain
and separate different types of traffic, and messages from one
VLAN cannot be transmitted onto another VLAN [9]. Different
from SV and GOOSE, the transmission of MMS messages
is achieved using the connection-oriented transmission con-
trol protocol (TCP). A station bus network typically carries
GOOSE, MMS, and some other messages, such as simple
network time protocol (SNTP) messages, which are used for
the synchronization of the sequence of events[8]. The traffic
flow in an SCN includes a sequence of SV, GOOSE, MMS,
PTP, and SNTP messages from a source device to a destination.
Since the ports of devices in an SCN are independent units
to send, forward, and receive messages, the transmission path
of a message can be treated as a combination of the connec-
tions between ports. So a port connection model to obtain and
express the connection relationships between the ports of all de-
vices in an SCN is proposed in this section, which consists of
a physical connection model and a logical connection model as
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2015
Fig. 2. Digraph of the process bus network.
Fig. 3. Digraph of the station bus network.
below. A physical connection is established by physical trans-
mission media, such as optical fibers, and a logical connection
is established by the control logic of switches. When a message
enters a switch port, the control logic determines which ports it
will be forwarded to. Two important mechanisms—VLAN and
TCP—are considered in the logical connection model.
B. Physical Connection Model
Label all ports of the devices in the SCN illustrated in Fig. 1
as 1 to 24. The ports in the SCN are denoted by nodes, and
the physical connection and logical connections are denoted by
solid arcs and dashed arcs, respectively. Each arc has a specified
direction indicated by an arrowhead. Thus, the digraphs, shown
as Figs. 2 and 3, are used to express the connection relationship
between ports. For Fig. 2, it is assumed that MU1 and MU2 only
send messages to IED1, and MU3 and MU4 only send messages
to IED2. IED1 and IED2 communicate with each other but they
never sent messages to MUs. For Fig. 3, it is assumed that IED1
only communicates with the server and the HMI, and IED2 only
communicates with the router and the station PC. The arcs de-
noting the physical connection between each pair of nodes are
all bidirectional. This is because Ethernet switches supporting
full-duplex operation (IEEE 802.3x) are widely adopted in an
SCN.
A matrix is desired to express the physical connec-
tion, where is the total number of the ports. The element
in is equal to 1 if there is a solid arc directing from node to
node in the digraph, and equal to 0 otherwise.
C. Logical Connection Model for VLAN
VLAN ID (VID) and port-based VLAN ID (PVID) are com-
monly used to configure a port-based VLAN group. Suppose
that there is a total of K VLANs in an SCN, and a ma-
trix is used to express the VLAN groups in this research. The
element of is equal to 1 if port belongs to VLAN . A
matrix is created to express the relationship between
a port and its PVID. The element of is equal to 1 if the
PVID of port is .
A matrix is used to express the logical connec-
tion. The element in is equal to 1 if there is a dashed arc
directing from node to node in the digraph, and equal to 0
otherwise. can be obtained as
(1)
 ZHANG et al.: ANALYTICAL MODELING OF TRAFFIC FLOW IN THE SUBSTATION COMMUNICATION NETWORK 2121

D. Logical Connection Model for TCP

A matrix is created to express the communication
connection relationship established by TCP. The element in
is equal to 1 if port establishes a communication connection
with port i , and is equal to 0 otherwise. Another matrix Fig. 4. Source model of an SV flow.
is desired to express the subordinate relationship of ports
and switches, the element , which is equal to 1 if port and
port belong to the same switch. Based on , , and , a Based on the so-called Min-Plus algebra, the output flow
matrix can be obtained. denotes the logical bounds of a service system can be computed from the min-plus
connection for the message sent from port to . The element deconvolution of the arrival curves and the system's service
in is equal to 1 if there is a dashed arc directing from curve as [12]
node to node in the digraph, and equal to 0 otherwise.
In addition to the port connection model, a source model and (4)
a service model are developed in the next section.
and the delay of the flow at time is bounded by
III. SOURCE MODEL AND SERVICE MODEL OF TRAFFIC FLOW
A traffic-flow source in this research represents the ports that (5)
send messages. A source model is constructed to describe the
properties of traffic-flow sources. These properties include the where and mean the least upper bound and the
correspondence between a port and the messages it sends, the greatest lower bound of a subset , and and are the arrival
message length, the message rate, the data rate of traffic flows, curve and the service curve, respectively [12].
and the triggering relationships between GOOSE flows. A ser- Particularly, if has the type and has the type,
vice model can describe the service that traffic flows receive then also has the ( , ) type with and
from the switches. The source model and the service model are [12], and .
both based on the network calculus theorem [10], [11]. Another important model, called Packetizer, is used to handle
packets with variable length. A Packetizer is the system that
A. Network Calculus Theorem transforms the input into . If a traffic flow has
Arrival curves and service curves are the basic concepts of the as an arrival curve, then has as an arrival
network calculus theorem. Based on the network calculus the- curve, where is the length of the longest packet in the traffic
orem, traffic flow is described by means of a cumulative func- flow . A Packetizer can transform the service curve of a
tion , defined as the number of bits seen on the traffic flow service system into , where [12].
in a time interval . An arrival curve model is defined to con-
strain traffic flows arriving at a service system. Traffic flow is B. Source Model of Traffic Flow
constrained by an arrival curve if and only if for all [12] Suppose the total number of messages in an SCN is and
the total number of ports is , a matrix can be used
(2)
to express the corresponding relationship between the messages
The model proposed by Cruz [10] is a simple linear but and their sources. in is equal to if port is the source
very important and frequently used arrival curve model. In the of message , and is equal to zero otherwise. is a numeric
model, is called the burstiness parameter and is an value since the length of message , and can also be an
upper bound on the long-term average rate of the traffic flow. A arrival curve function when the maximum message delay
traffic flow is -upper constrained if and only if for all distribution is calculated.
[12] SV flows always have a fixed data rate . And in considera-
tion of the fact that one message source normally outputs entire
(3) SV packets rather than a continuous bit flow, a Packetizer should
be applied in the source model of SV flow. In Fig. 4,
A service curve is proposed to abstract the details of packet stands for a packetizer.
scheduling mechanisms and define lower bounds on the service Therefore, an SV message source can be well bounded by the
provided by service systems, such as switches, routers, and so ( ) model with , where is the data rate of
on. The service curve model is described as a function of time SV flow , and is equal to .
that specifies the service that is offered by those service systems PTP and SNTP messages are both sent with a fixed interval,
during a defined time interval. A widely used service curve type so the source models of PTP and SNTP are the same as those of
is the so-called rate-latency type . can be represented the SV flow.
by using a linear function with as the rate Compared to the SV flow, GOOSE flow has a fixed data
term and as the latency term, where denotes rate only in a steady-state period when there is no fault or
[12]. One flow having as its service curve means it receives warning event occurring, where means the lowest data rate
the service of rate in time after its arrival at the service of GOOSE flow i . So in a steady-state period, GOOSE flow i is
system. bounded with , where is equal to .

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 2122 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2015

Suppose an event occurs at time t, the related GOOSE flow i

first changes its data rate to , where means the highest
data rate of GOOSE flow . Subsequently, the data rate declines
exponentially until it returns to . This change of data rate
causes a traffic burst in a period of time , so is called the
bursting period. Since is usually very short and the data rate
does not exceed , an arrival curve is used Fig. 5. Service model of traffic flow.
to bound GOOSE flow i in a burst period. To summarize, the
source model can be described by a piecewise linear function as
follows: but the server is dedicated to the highest priority as soon as
the lower priority packet is served. So the maximum value of
for steady state period (6a)
the latency is , where is the transmission rate
for bursting period. (6b) of the th output port, and is the length of the longest
However, a causal relationship exists between the traffic burst packet tagged with priority from 0 to -1 that goes through the
of different GOOSE flows, which is called the triggering rela- th output port. Therefore, the service curve of packets
tionships in this paper. For example, if a fault occurs and a trip is with priority provided by the th output port is
required, then GOOSE message that carries the changed state
of the trip indication is transmitted immediately, which leads to (8)
a traffic burst of GOOSE flow . When the circuit-breaker (CB)
state changes, it publishes this using the GOOSE message , For a packet with a priority of , it may
which causes a traffic burst of GOOSE flow . In addition, var- be delayed by both a packet, whose priority is lower than ,
ious triggering relationships exist between GOOSE flows, and being served and packets with priorities that are higher than .
a matrix. can be used to express such a triggering re- According to [13], the service curve of packets tagged
lationship. Element in is equal to 1 if flow triggers flow with priority provided by the th output port is
and is equal to 0 otherwise.
IEDs can be configured to send MMS messages triggered
by data change, quality change, or data update, which can also
send MMS messages with a fixed interval. Therefore, MMS
messages can be configured by an event-driven or time-driven
mode. The source model of the time-driven MMS flow is the
same as that of SV, and the source model of the event-driven (9)
MMS flow can be described as follows:
where
for no event (7a)
for event. (7b) (10)

In (7b), is the data rate of MMS flow , and is equal to

. In (10), denotes that packet has priority . It is
Furthermore, in order to describe the message rate of a source, assumed that is not less than , so that the packets
a matrix , whose element denotes the amount of with lower priorities do not starve.
message sent by its source per second, is defined here. In this With regard to the service model adopting the FIFO policy,
paper, it is assumed that the message rate of message passing if packets with priority have as a ser-
through each port in the network is also . vice curve, then the service curve of packet with priority is
[12], where
C. Service Model of Traffic Flow
(11)
Two important queue scheduling policies, that is, first in first
out (FIFO) and priority queuing (PQ), are considered in the ser-
vice model of traffic flow. FIFO and PQ are commonly used to and
achieve the congestion control and improve the quality of ser-
vice (QoS). The service policy between packets with different (12)
priorities is nonpre-emptive PQ, where packets with a high pri-
ority are served before those with low priority. The policy be-
tween packets with the same priority is FIFO, where the packets Based on the models constructed before, a traffic-flow calcu-
are served according to the order of their arrival. Such a service lation algorithm is presented in the next section.
model is illustrated in Fig. 5.
Suppose the packets in an SCN are tagged from priority 0 to IV. TRAFFIC-FLOW CALCULATION ALGORITHM
. When the packets with priority arrive at the th output port, In this section, an algorithm is presented to obtain the distri-
they may be delayed by a lower priority packet being served, bution of message, traffic load, and maximum message delay.

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 ZHANG et al.: ANALYTICAL MODELING OF TRAFFIC FLOW IN THE SUBSTATION COMMUNICATION NETWORK
Fig. 6. Flow diagram of the algorithm to obtain the distribution of message .
A. Message Distribution
Fig. 6 shows the flow diagram of the algorithm to obtain the
distribution of message .
Firstly, the initialization of , , , , and is made
according to the basic information of SCN. Elements in are all
in the numeric value form as discussed in Section III-B. If port
is the source of message , then all the elements except in
are set to zero when calculating the distribution of message .
Then the logical connection matrix for message is obtained
using the method proposed in Section II. The (13)–(16) in the
flow diagram are shown as
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
where indicates that it is the iteration of the algorithm.
Left multiplying by in (13) means transmitting message
from port to the switch port that directly connected with port
through a physical transmission medium. The minus sign means
the changing of the transmission direction. For example, de-
notes that message is sent by port , while denotes that mes-
sage is received by the switch port. Left multiplying
by in (14) means forwarding message through switches.
When a message arrives at a non-switch port, namely a des-
tination port, it cannot be further forwarded in the network. So
the nonzero elements of should be reset to 0 if
corresponds to a non-switch port, and is obtained. Then it
should be checked whether there is any nonzero element in
to deduce whether all the messages have arrived at destination
ports. If there is not any nonzero element in , (16) is used to
obtain that expresses the distribution of message .
Suppose the total number of messages and ports is and ,
respectively, a matrix , that expresses the distribution
of all the messages, can be obtained as the sum of of all the
messages.
B. Traffic Load Distribution
A matrix is created here to express the traffic load
distribution of all the ports, which can be calculated as
(17)
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2123
Note that the elements in are all in the form of ,
which denotes that port outputs traffic load and inputs traffic
load .
Embedding the GOOSE triggering relationship into the traffic
load distribution calculation algorithm can provide an approach
to calculating the traffic load distribution under some particular
scenarios such as the single-phase short circuit. All the GOOSE
flows triggered directly or indirectly by any GOOSE flows are
obtained based on , which are described using a new
matrix . The elements equaling to 1 in the column of
correspond to the flows triggered by GOOSE flow directly and
indirectly. Since the elements of are all in the numeric value
form, it is assumed that all the flows burst at the same time.
If GOOSE flow a bursts, then the column should first be
extracted from to form a matrix , then is
used to derive a matrix . Replacing the 0 elements in
with the message-rate in a steady-state period and replace
the nonzero elements with the message-rate in a bursting period,
is obtained to calculate the traffic load distribution with (17)
when GOOSE flow a bursts.
C. Maximum Message Delay Distribution
The delay of a message in a switch can be divided into four
types: packet receiving delay, processing delay, queuing delay
and transmission delay, among which delay of the first two types
is in a range of few microseconds [12], typically [3]. And
based on (5), the upper bound of queuing delay and transmission
delay, which is called the maximum message delay in this paper,
can be calculated with fixed arrival curves and service curves.
Note that when calculating the maximum message delay of a
switch, the packet receiving and processing delay of should
be considered.
Therefore, when calculating the maximum message delay
distribution, all the nonzero elements in that express the
length of messages are first replaced with the corresponding
arrival curves, and a matrix is created. Another new
matrix is defined, the element of which represents
the service curve of traffic flow when going through port .
Place the relevant elements in the row of into equalities
(8), (9), (11), (12) and can be calculated.
Define a matrix to represent the maximum message
delay distribution. Substituting the element in and in
into (5), and the element of is obtained. denotes
the maximum message delay of message , when going through
port .
Applying the GOOSE triggering relationship to the calcu-
lation algorithm provides an approach to calculating the max-
imum message delay distribution under some particular sce-
narios. Triggered GOOSE flows do not burst simultaneously
because of the network delay. In order to simplify the calcu-
lation, it is assumed that all the triggered GOOSE flows burst at
the same time. However, the assumption makes the delay larger
than that in practical situations and leads to a conservative anal-
ysis of network performance. The arrival curves of the GOOSE
flows triggered by another GOOSE flow are modified to those
in a bursting period according to , and the maximum message
delay distribution is calculated.
 2124 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2015

V. DIFFERENT NETWORK CONDITIONS

In this section, network conditions of a SCN are divided into
three scenarios.

A. Minimum Load Scenario

Fig. 7. One-line diagram of the substation example.
As discussed in Section III-B, a GOOSE flow has a fixed
data-rate that is also the minimum data-rate, when it is in a
steady-state period. So the traffic load distribution of a SCN is
the lowest when all the GOOSE flows are in the steady-state pe-
riod, which is called the minimum load scenario in this paper. In
most of time, a network operates in the minimum load scenario.
Since the traffic load distribution is the lowest, the threshold
for the network monitoring can be set based on the traffic load
distribution in this scenario. If the network monitor finds that
the traffic load somewhere in the network is lower than the
threshold, it may indicate that there exists a fault such as link
disconnection or packet loss.

B. Maximum Load Scenario Fig. 8. Laboratory setup of the SCN.

The traffic load distribution of a SCN is the highest when all

the GOOSE flows are in a bursting period, which is defined as TABLE I
DETAIL INFORMATION OF MESSAGES
the maximum load scenario in this paper. Even if the maximum
load scenario basically does not exist, the maximum traffic load,
that a link may withstand, can be calculated in this scenario,
which is helpful to decide which kind of network schemes to
choose and how large the throughput of switches should be. So
the maximum load scenario is important for the network design
and equipment selection.

C. Typical Event Scenario TABLE II

A SCN is working in the typical event scenario, when faults
or alarms occur in a primary system. One fault or alarm cor-
responds to one kind of typical event scenarios in a SCN. Ap-
plying the traffic-flow model and calculation algorithm to this
scenario, the traffic load distribution and the maximum message
delay distribution can be predicted and the network performance
can be analyzed when faults or alarms occur.
VI. CASE STUDY AND DISCUSSION
In this section, two cases are studied. Case A is used to verify
the accuracy of the proposed method, in which the SCN of a
simplified substation example including a transformer bay (T1)
and a feeder bay (F1) is investigated. In Case B, the SCN of a
typical 220 kV substation is employed to illustrate the possible
applications of the proposed method.
A. Case A
Fig. 7 shows the one-line diagram of the simplified substation
studied in this case. Fig. 8 shows the laboratory setup of the SCN
for the simplified substation example. In the laboratory setup, all
the important messages, MMS, GOOSE and SV, are involved to
verify the proposed models and algorithms.
In Fig. 8, there are three cascaded switches, four protection
IEDs, three breaker IEDs and a station PC. All the four MUs are
implemented in a relay protection testing device with a quad-
port network interface card. The transmission rate of each port
and link is 100 Mbps. A network analyzer is connected to the
TRAFFIC LOAD DISTRIBUTION IN THE MAXIMUM LOAD SCENARIO
switches to measure the traffic load and message delay of the
SCN.
Table I shows the detail information of the messages sent by
the devices in the SCN. The interval of GOOSE messages in a
burst period and a steady period is 0.002 s and 1 s, respectively.
During the experiment, the station PC only sends MMS to BR
IED2. By configuring VLAN groups, the traffic for three types
of protections are separated, including the bus protection, the
line protection and the transformer protection.
In order to verify the accuracy of the proposed method, the
SCN is analyzed by the proposed method (PM) and the network
analyzer (NA), respectively, for comparison purposes.
1) Traffic Load Distribution: Tables II and III show the
traffic load outputting from the ports numbered from 1 to 5
in Fig. 8 in different scenarios. The traffic load measured by
the network analyzer is very close to that obtained using the
proposed method, which shows that the proposed method can
act as an effective tool to calculate the traffic load in different
scenarios.
2) Maximum Message Delay Distribution: GOOSE3 is
the tripping message of the busbar protection, which is for-
warded by all the three switches and received by BR IED1–3

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 ZHANG et al.: ANALYTICAL MODELING OF TRAFFIC FLOW IN THE SUBSTATION COMMUNICATION NETWORK
TABLE III
TRAFFIC LOAD DISTRIBUTION IN THE MINIMUM LOAD SCENARIO
TABLE IV
MAXIMUM MESSAGE DELAY OF GOOSE3
Fig. 9. One-line diagram of a typical 220 kV substation.
finally. Due to its importance and wide distribution in the SCN,
GOOSE3 is employed to verify the accuracy of the maximum
message delay distribution calculated by the proposed method.
The maximum message delay calculated using the proposed
method of GOOSE3, when going through the port numbered
from 6 to 10 in Fig. 8 in the maximum load scenario, is shown
in Table IV. GOOSE3 may be delayed by both the MMS and
GOOSE2, when going through Port9, so that the maximum mes-
sage delay reaches . No message delays GOOSE3
when it goes through Port6, so that the maximum message delay
is only . The delay of GOOSE3 is also measured by
the network analyzer. Table IV shows the maximum delay of
GOOSE3, which is measured in a period of 5 minutes in the
maximum load scenario.
As Table IV shows, the maximum delay of GOOSE3 mea-
sured by the network analyzer is very close to the calculated
maximum message delay, and the deviation is within . The
comparison results show that the maximum message delay ob-
tained using the proposed method can be utilized to evaluate the
performance of SCN.
B. Case B
In Case B, a typical 220 kV substation with 2 transformer
bays (T1 and T2), 7 feeder bays (F1-F7) and 1 bus section bay
(S1) is investigated [4]. Fig. 9 shows the one-line diagram and
the physical bays of the substation.
The SCN of this typical 220 kV substation is shown as Fig.
10, in which each disc represents a subnet of a bay, and each
subnet has its own bay switch. The SCN is constructed with
a star architecture and all the bay switches are connected to a
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2125
Fig. 10. SCN of a typical 220 kV substation.
TABLE V
TRAFFIC LOAD DISTRIBUTION OF CENTER SWITCH
TABLE VI
MAXIMUM MESSAGE DELAY OF G1 AND G2 MESSAGE
Center Switch. The substation configuration of Fig. 10 is similar
to a real substation, and it is employed to illustrate the possible
applications of the proposed method.
1) Traffic Load Distribution: Table V shows the traffic load
outputting from the ports numbered from 1 to 4 belonging to the
Center Switch in the maximum load scenario and the minimum
load scenario.
The traffic load distribution in the maximum load scenario
provides a guidance on the network device selection. 77.036
Mbps is the highest outputting load that Port1 of the Center
Switch may withstand, so the ports and links with a transmis-
sion rate of 100 Mbps should be used here instead of 10 Mbps.
Moreover, if the monitoring value of the load outputting Port1 is
greater than 77.036 Mbps, an alarm is issued to inform there are
some problems like equipment failure and network congestion.
0.080 Mbps is the lowest outputting load that Port3 may with-
stand, so if the monitoring value of the load outputting Port3 is
lower than 0.080 Mbps, then the network monitor can determine
there are some problems, such as link disconnection and packet
loss, occurring in the network and an alarm is issued.
2) Maximum Message Delay Distribution: A tripping
GOOSE (G1) with a priority of 7 and a CB state GOOSE
(G2) with a priority of 5 are employed to illustrate possible
applications of the maximum message delay distribution. G1 is
sent by the busbar protection IED in bay S1 and G2 is sent by
the breaker IED in bay F1. Take the bus fault as an example of
the typical event scenario. Table VI lists the maximum message
delay that it takes G1 and G2 to get to the breaker IED in F1
and the busbar protection IED in S1, respectively.
The maximum message delay distribution can be used to an-
alyze the impact of the queue scheduling policy and different
typical events on the real-time performance of the messages in
a SCN. From the results in Table VI, the real-time performance
of G1 with priority 7 is obviously greater than that of G2 with
priority 5. The service policy of priority queuing can maintain
the maximum message delay of G1 at about 0.5 ms in all the
three scenarios. The line fault has little impact on the delay of
G1 and increases the maximum message delay of G2 by about
.
 2126
TABLE VII
SENSITIVITY VALUES FOR MAXIMUM MESSAGE DELAY OF G1
The maximum message delay in the maximum load scenario
can be used to evaluate the real-time performance of a SCN.
Assuming the maximum processing time for each IED as 1.2
ms, and two IEDs concerned, the maximum network delay of
tripping and blocking GOOSE messages should be less than
. And the maximum network delay of
GOOSE messages except tripping and blocking GOOSE should
be less than [7]. The maximum mes-
sage delay of G1 and G2 in the maximum load scenario is 0.568
ms and 5.2512 ms, respectively, which satisfies the real-time re-
quirement.
3) Sensitivity Analysis: A sensitivity analysis for maximum
message delay can be undertaken to find out the key network
parameters to reduce the maximum message delay. Sensitivity
values are partial derivatives of the maximum message delay
with respect to parameters being varied in the sensitivity
analysis.
Table VII shows the sensitivity values for the maximum
message delay of G1, when going through Port6 of the Center
Switch. is the packet length of the longest messages
tagged with priority from 0 to 6 that goes through Port6. is
the transmission rate of Port6. and are the packet rate
and the sum of the length of the messages tagged with priority
7 that goes through Port6 except G1, respectively. is the
length of G1.
From the results listed in Table VII, it can be concluded that
increasing can reduce the maximum message delay of G1,
and reducing has a more significant effect on the reduc-
tion of the maximum message delay, which is affected by the
segmentation of the network, networking scheme and so on.
The maximum message delay can also be reduced by shortening
and . Based on the sensitivity values, the network per-
formance can be optimized by improving the SCN design and
adjusting the corresponding parameters, which is the key func-
tion of the proposed method.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the port connection model, traffic-flow source
model and service model of a SCN are developed, and based on
these models, the traffic-flow calculation algorithm is proposed.
The distribution of traffic load and maximum message delay
calculated using the proposed method is very close to that
measured by the network analyzer, which verifies the accuracy
of the proposed method. Possible applications illustrated using
a typical 220 kV substation example show that the proposed
method is very useful in the design and engineering for a
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 30, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2015
reliable and high performance SCN. In the future work, the
traffic-flow model and algorithm will be extended to the smart
grid communication network, which will bring much more
useful applications.
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Yanxu Zhang was born in Jilin, China, in 1988. He
received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering
from the South China University of Technology,
Guangzhou, China, in 2011, where he is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
with the School of Electric Power Engineering.
His research interests include power system pro-
tective relaying, substation automation system, and
power system communications.
Zexiang Cai was born in Nanjing, China, in 1960.
He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering
from Huainan Mineral Institute, Hefei, China, in
1982, the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from
Northeast China Institute of Electrical Power Engi-
neering in 1985, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China, in 1991.
Currently, he is a Professor with the School of
Electric Power Engineering of South China Univer-
sity of Technology, Guangzhou, China. His current
research interests include power system stability and control, and power system
protective relaying.
 ZHANG et al.: ANALYTICAL MODELING OF TRAFFIC FLOW IN THE SUBSTATION COMMUNICATION NETWORK
Xiaohua Li received the B.E. degree in electrical
engineering from Huazhong University of Science
Technology, Wuhan, China, in 1997 and the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering in 2003.
Currently, she is a Professor with South China Uni-
versity of Technology, Guangzhou, China. Her cur-
rent research interests are power system protective
relaying, HVDC transmission system relaying, and
fault analysis of power systems.
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS. Downloaded on April 06,2021 at 02:30:17 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
2127
Ruiwen He received the M.S. degree in electrical
engineering from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China,
in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engi-
neering from South China University of Technology,
Guangzhou, in 2005.
Currently, she is Associate Professor in the Faculty
of Electrical Engineering, Guangdong University of
Technology, Guangzhou, China. Her current research
interests are intelligent protection of power systems,
IEC 61850-based substation automation systems, and
smart grid.