592 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 18, NO.
1, JANUARY 2022
A Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm
for the Wide-Area Damping Control Design
Murilo E. C. Bento , Student Member, IEEE
Abstract—The presence of low-frequency and low-
dampened oscillation modes can compromise the operat-
ing stability of power systems. Recent research has shown
that the use of phasor measurement units data to compose
a wide-area damping controller (WADC) has been shown
to be effective in mitigating such oscillation modes but
the possibility of loss of communication channels due to
cyber-attacks or failures can compromise the proper oper-
ation of this controller. Besides, traditional control design
methods present difficulties for the WADC control design.
This article proposes a method based on hybrid particle
swarm optimization in order to design a WADC that ensures
robustness to power system-operating uncertainties, time
delays variations on the WADC channels, and the perma-
nent failure of the WADC communication channels. Modal
analysis and nonlinear time-domain simulations were con-
ducted in the IEEE 68-bus power system considering a set
of scenarios.
Index Terms—Hybrid particle swarm optimization, per-
manent communication failure, small-signal stability, wide-
area damping controller.
I. INTRODUCTION
OWER systems play a big role in the development of a
P society. The increase in energy consumption over the years
required the expansion of power generation sources and tools
capable of assisting the system operator in ensuring a continuous
and secure supply of electricity to consumption centers.
The development in communication and information tech-
nologies promoted the creation of the wide-area measure-
ment system (WAMS) that presents phasor measurement units
(PMUs) installed in certain buses of the power system that are
capable of collecting current and voltage measurements of these
buses with high sampling rates and time synchronization due to
the use of global positioning system (GPS) and transmit the data
set for a phasor data concentrator (PDC) [1]. The possibility of
having real-time operating information on the system opened
up research fronts for the development of tools that are useful
Manuscript received September 29, 2020; revised January 5, 2021;
accepted January 23, 2021. Date of publication January 26, 2021; date
of current version September 29, 2021. This work was supported in
part by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) under Grant
#2015/24245-8 and in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de
Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) under Grant #88887.510888/2020-
00. Paper no. TII-20-4567.
The author is with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
University of São Paulo, Sao Carlos 13566-590, Brazil (e-mail:
murilo.bento@usp.br).
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2021.3054846.
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for the monitoring [2], protection [3], and control [4] of modern
power systems.
In small signal-stability studies, one of the objectives is to
assess whether the low-frequency oscillation modes are effec-
tively well damped because otherwise it can compromise the
stability of the operation of the power system and consequently
the supply of electrical energy [5]. Traditionally, the use of
power system stabilizers (PSSs) coupled with automatic voltage
regulators (AVRs) in the vicinity of a synchronous generator
provides good damping rates for local oscillation modes in the
frequency range from 0.8 to 2 Hz [6]. However, PSS has limited
effect in dampening interarea oscillation modes in the frequency
range 0.1 to 0.8 Hz for requiring global system information [5].
The use of PMU data to estimate speed signals and send to
a central controller or wide-area damping controller (WADC)
has shown promise in damping interarea oscillation modes as
pointed out by recent studies [7], [8]. Recently, Pierre et al. [9]
designed and implemented a WADC in a real power system, and
a preliminary set of promising tests was obtained. Unlike the
design of PSS-type controllers, WADC-type controllers present
additional challenges such as i) selection of input and output
signals that will effectively assist in the control design with mul-
tiple inputs and multiple outputs (MIMO) so as not to make the
design infactible, ii) consideration of different time delays in the
WADC communication channels, iii) consideration of failures
in WADC channels due to cyber-attacks, and iv) developing an
appropriate method to address these challenges that is effective
in the WADC design.
The challenge associated with selecting WADC signals was
solved by a set of proposals. Surinkaew and Ngamroo [7] pro-
posed an adaptive selection of WADC signals using geometric
measures considering different operating conditions. Padhy et
al. [10] propose to select the WADC input/output control signals
using data clustering approach and principal component analy-
sis. Bento [11] proposed a heuristic method for signal selection
using an optimization model.
The modeling and consideration of time delays has been
addressed in different ways in the scientific community. Some
authors [12]–[14] considered fixed time delays in all WADC
channels given by Padé approximation, assuming that a buffer
would hold data from all channels up to a fixed time and then
be effectively used. Other authors have considered variable time
delays on WADC channels. In [15]–[17], the authors proposed
an adaptive delay compensator to handle different time delay.
Yao et al. [18] proposed a networked predictive control approach
to compensate for constant and random time delays. Hashmy et
al. [19] proposed a method that uses a reinforcement learning
technique to overcome the challenges of communication delays.
A recent concern related to the WADC operation in the power
system is the susceptibility of the PMU data to cyber-attacks that
BENTO: HYBRID PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR THE WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROL DESIGN
can compromise its operation [20]–[22]. The authors in [23]
demonstrated that a designed DoS attack sequence on PMU
channels can interfere with the signals sent from sensors through
such channels and compromise the system stability. Zhao et
al. [24] and Liu et al. [25] demonstrated and proposed a strategy
to deal with false data injection attacks that can compromise the
damping of interarea oscillations. Recent work has attempted
to solve this problem in different ways. Zhang and Vittal [26]
proposed to shut down the WADC operation when any fault was
identified and the system would operate only with local control.
Khosravani et al. [27] propose to reconfigure WADC when any
failure is identified but requires a set of requirements. The use
of redundant signals was proposed by Zhang and Vittal [28] but
has a limited effect. Mahish et al. [8] and Yogarathinam and
Chaudhuri [29] proposed a strategy for dealing with temporary
failures. Taousser et al. [30] proposed a method to estimate
the maximum allowable value of the time of interruption of
information transmission that does not violate the closed-loop
stability. Bento et al. [31] consider permanent failures of one
WADC channel, but the time delay was considered fixed.
Different approaches have been proposed in the literature
for the WADC design, and one can find methods based on
linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) [31], linear quadratic regu-
lator (LQR) [32] and evolutionary computation [33]. The main
difficulty of LQR-based approaches is the inclusion of uncer-
tainties such as load variation and time delay under the nominal
operating point as pointed out in [32]. The methods based on
LMIs can consider uncertainties of operation of the system but
they can have difficulties of convergence due to the dimension of
the system and the level of uncertainties to consider. In addition,
in some cases as shown in [31], there is a need to reduce the
order of the controller in order to be physically implementable
and this reduction can compromise the performance require-
ments achieved in the design stage. Another concern related
to LMI-based methods is that they seek to meet a minimum
damping requirement associated with an angle in the complex
plane and this requirement can cause well-damped modes to be
compromised and their damping to be reduced to the desired
threshold. The approaches on nature-inspired population-based
intelligent optimization are effective in dealing with system
uncertainties but as the level of uncertainties, the size of the
system, and the number of variables increase, these approaches
need to be improved, such as the adoption of hybrid approaches,
in order to ensure convergence by meeting design requirements.
Developing a method to design a WADC robust to i) uncertain-
ties at the power system operation, ii) variations in time delays
within a desired range, and iii) the permanent communication
loss from a WADC channel and which still meets performance
requirements of the power system, such as high damping rates
of low-frequency oscillation modes, remains a challenge in
the scientific community. Recent research has shown that the
use of hybrid approaches nature-inspired population-based
intelligent optimization techniques provides greater success
and effectiveness in solving complex engineering optimization
problems [34]–[36]. Motivated by these recent researches, this
article aims to propose a hybrid method to the design problem
of central controllers subject to operational uncertainties. Fig. 1
describes the two-level control structure to be designed, PSSs
as local controllers and WADC as central controllers.
This article proposes a method based on a hybrid particle
swarm optimization (HPSO) to design a WADC robust to time
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593
Fig. 1. Two-level control structure to be designed.
delays within a certain desirable range and permanent commu-
nication failures of WADC channels. The limits of time delays
will be modeled by the second-order Padé approximation and the
desired robustness will be by polytopic modeling. The robust-
ness to communication failures will be considered at the WADC
design stage and will follow a strategy of properly zeroing
certain positions of the matrices associated with the input and
output of the WADC. The proposed multiobjective model aims
to maximize damping rates in different low-frequency modes.
The proposed method was evaluated by modal analysis and
time-domain nonlinear simulation through its application in the
IEEE 68-bus power system, the largest power system model
in [37] for small-signal stability studies.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. Section II
introduces the modeling of the power system and the WADC to
be designed. Section III presents the proposed procedure based
on HPSO. Section IV details the application of the proposed
procedure in a power system. Finally, Section V concludes this
article.
II. MODELING
A. Power System Modeling With Time Delays
Power systems are dynamic systems that can be modeled by
differential-algebraic equations. In small-signal stability studies,
it is a common practice to linearize these equations around equi-
librium points resulting in the following state-space model [5]:
ẋi = Ai xi + Bi ui (1)
y i = Ci x i (2)
n
for i = 1, . . ., Noc , where xi ∈ R represents the state vector,
ui ∈ Rp the input vector (WADC control signals), yi ∈ Rp the
output vector (speed signals), Noc is the number of operating
conditions, and the matrices present the following dimensions:
Ai ∈ Rn×n , Bi ∈ Rn×p , and Ci ∈ Rp×n .
The pure time delay given by e−T s to be used in linear
models can be represented by the following second-order Padé
approximation [32]:
6 − 2T s − T2 s + T62
Gd (s) = = (3)
6 + 4T s + (sT )2 s2 + T4 s + T62
where T represents the time delay. From this transfer function,
it is possible to obtain the following model in state-space [32]:
ẋd = Ad xd + Bd ud (4)
594 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2022

y d = Cd x d (5) This matrix of transfer functions can be represented by a

model in state-space obeying the canonical representation [5]
through the following canonical representation [38]
 −6   6  ẋc = Ac xc + Bc uc (18)
0 T2
Ad = B = T2 Cd = [ 0 1 ] (6) y c = Cc x c + D c u c
1 −4
T
d −2
T
(19)

and, then, Gd (s) = Cd (sI − Ad )−1 Bd . where xc ∈ R2p is the state vector of the central controller,
As can be seen in Fig. 1, time delays are present at the input yc ∈ Rp is the output vector, uc ∈ Rp is the input vec-
and output of the WADC. Thus, one can have a state-space model tor, Ac ∈ R2p×2p , Bc ∈ R2p×p , Cc ∈ Rp×2p , Dc ∈ Rp×p and,
for the WADC input [32] then, CC(s) = Cc (sI − Ac )−1 Bc + Dc .

ẋdo = Ado xdo + Bdo udo (7) C. Closed-Loop Power System Model
ydo = Cdo xdo (8) The control design requirements aim to evaluate the closed-
and a state-space model for the WADC output [32] loop power system which can also be represented as a state-space
model [5]
ẋdi = Adi xdi + Bdi udi (9)
˙ i = A
x  ix
i (20)
ydi = Cdi xdi . (10)
i = [ x̄Ti xc T ]T is the state vector and
where x
The objective is to consider minimum (Tmin ) and maximum  
(Tmax ) limits of time delays, obtain models in state-space (7)– Āi + B̄i Dc C̄i B̄i Cc

Ai = . (21)
(10), and design a single central controller. As these state-space Bc C̄i Ac
limits and models will be known, they can be included in the
state-space model (1)–(2) that describes the dynamics of the One of the performance requirements is to guarantee a damp-
power system resulting in the following model [32]: ing ratio higher than 5% for all eigenvalues.
x̄˙ i = Āi x̄i + B̄i ūi (11)
D. Robustness to Permanent Communication Failure
ȳi = C̄i x̄i (12) In the control design stage, the permanent communication
where the matrices of the ith operating condition are [32] failure of a WADC channel can be treated as properly zeroing
  the rows or columns of the matrices referring to the WADC input
Ai Bi Cdi 0 and output signals. In this research, only the loss of one channel
Āi = 0 Adi 0 (13) was considered, but the proposed approach has no limitation in
Bdo Ci 0 Ado considering how many channels will be lost.
 T Considering a WADC with p input channels and p output
B̄i = 0 Bdi T 0 (14) channels, if a channel s (s ∈ N, 1 ≤ s ≤ p) at the input of the
WADC, that is, the sth speed deviation signal from the system
C̄i = [ 0 0 Cdo ] . (15)
provided to the WADC is lost, the sth line of the system matrix
This research will use two sets of matrices (13)–(15), one C̄ ∈ Rp×r must be zeroed and this new matrix will be called
to represent the minimum time delay (Tmin ) and the other to C̄s . Since there are p channels, then there is the possibility of
represent the maximum time delay (Tmax ). p losses and p combinations of C̄s . However, if a channel t
(t ∈ N, 1 ≤ t ≤ p) at the output of the WADC, that is, the tth
B. Wide-Area Damping Controller Model control signal provided by the WADC is lost, the tth column of
the system matrix B̄ ∈ Rr×p must be zeroed and this new matrix
The WADC to be designed in this research obeys a control will be called B̄t . Again, there is the possibility of p losses and
structure of the MIMO type and can be represented by the p combinations of B̄t .
following matrix of transfer functions [5]: In this process, it is possible to define three sets of closed-loop
⎡ ⎤ matrices: i) A i [see (21)], when all WADC channels are working;
cc1,1 (s) · · · cc1,p (s)
⎢ .. .. .. ⎥ 
ii) Ai [see (22)], when the sth speed signal is lost; iii) Ăti [see
s
CC(s) = ⎣ . . . ⎦ (16) (23)], when the tth control signal is lost
ccp,1 (s) · · · ccp,p (s)  
 s Āi + B̄i Dc C̄si B̄i Cc
where each transfer function (cck,m , k = 1, . . ., p, m = 1, . . ., p) Ai = , s = 1, . . ., p (22)
Bc C̄si Ac
is described by a gain block and lead-lag blocks [5]  
Āi + B̄ti Dc C̄i B̄ti Cc
T 1k,m s + 1 T 3k,m s + 1 Ăti = , t = 1, . . ., p. (23)
cck,m = Kk,m · · (17) Bc C̄i Ac
T 2k,m s + 1 T 4k,m s + 1
The objective is to design a WADC that maximizes the damp-
where Kk,m ∈ R1 is gain value in a specified range ing rates of a set of eigenvalues considering these three sets of
[K min , K max ] and T 1k,m ∈ R1 , T 2k,m ∈ R1 , T 3k,m ∈ R1 , closed-loop systems in order to guarantee robustness to a set
and T 4k,m ∈ R1 are time constants in the range [0,1]. Usually, of operating points, to variations in time delays and a perma-
the controller poles (T 2k,m , T 4k,m ) are fixed and the control nent loss of one WADC channel. The proposed multiobjective
problem variables are Kk,m , T 1k,m , and T 3k,m . optimization approach is described below.

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BENTO: HYBRID PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR THE WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROL DESIGN 595

III. PROPOSED PROCEDURE
Section III-A introduces the traditional PSO and Section III-B
describes the HPSO adopted in this research. Section III-C
presents the problem formulation including the objective func-
tion adopted in this research. Section III-D presents the pseu-
docode of the proposed HPSO algorithm.
A. Particle Swarm Optimization
PSO aims to reproduce the behavior of particles in a swarm
and has the following properties [39]:
1) Each particle j (j = 1, . . ., Np ) has the following char-
acteristics: a current position (xj ) in the search space for
a given iteration, a current velocity (vj ), and the best
position (xlj ) of this particle among all iterations so far
according to an objective function.
2) xg represents the best positions among all Np particles
(xlj ) considering all iterations so far.
At each iteration, all Np particles in the swarm will have
their velocity and position updated according to (24) and (25),
respectively [39].
vj (iter + 1) = ω · vj (iter)
 
+ c1 · φlj · xlj (iter) − xj (iter)
g
+ c2 · φj · [xg (iter) − xj (iter)]
xj (iter + 1) = xj (iter) + vj (iter + 1)
where ω ∼ U (0, 1) is the inertia weigh, a fixed parameter that
represents how much speed you want to be transmitted for the
next iteration, c1 ∼ U (0, 10) and c2 ∼ U (0, 10) are also fixed
parameters that aim to consider how important the differences
between the best local and global positions will be for the next
iteration, and φlj ∼ U (0, 1) and φgj ∼ U (0, 1) are used to affect
the stochastic nature of the algorithm [39].
The methods based on PSO converge when they reach the
maximum limit of iterations (Niter ) or when the best global
position (xg ) meets the expected requirements according to the
objective function of the optimization problem [39].
B. Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization
Since it was introduced to the scientific community, PSO has
been applied and studied in several problems. Besides, other
techniques of computational evolution and swarm intelligence
have been proposed allowing for a comparative assessment.
Angeline [40] evaluate the performance of the PSO with evolu-
tionary optimization and, based on the comparative evaluation
performed, they conclude that the PSO performs well in the
first iterations but presents problems in finding the optimal
global solution due to the adjustment of the inertia weigh ω.
As can be seen in (24), updating the speed of the next iteration
(vj (iter + 1)) depends on three parts and the inertia weigh
ω is usually a fixed design parameter. Thus, when an optimal
location is found, the upgrades of the global (xg ) and local
(xlj ) optimum particles can enter a process of stagnation and
compromise the optimization problem in finding a solution
that meets performance requirements. The same authors also
conclude that the evolutionary optimization mutation operator
contributes to the search for the optimal solution.
Motivated by this research, this article proposes a HPSO
including the typical mutation operator of genetic algorithms
(GAs) [40] into PSO. In order to avoid particle stagnation at
a local minimum, the mutation operator will act on the inertia
weigh ω but a threshold () for this mutation process will be
employed to avoid a purely random search process. Each particle
will have its own inertia weigh (ωj ) and can be updated at
each iteration (iter = 1, . . ., Niter ) depending on the level of
stagnation of the optimal location of the particle (xlj ) in the
last Liter iterations according to the objective function of the
optimization problem (J(·))
if |J(xlj (iter)) − J(xlj (iter − Liter ))| < 
ωj = rand(0, 1)
end (26)
where rand(·) is a uniform distribution function in [0,1].
C. Problem Formulation
The variables xj of the problem are the parameters of the
WADC to be designed, xj = [ Kk,m T 1k,m T 3k,m ] for k =
1, . . ., p, m = 1, . . ., p and they are subject to the constraints
K min < Kk,m < K max , 0 < T 1k,m < 1 and 0 < T 3k,m < 1.
The time constant T 2k,m and T 4k,m related to the WADC poles
will be fixed. The objective function adopted is
(24) 
N 
oc N m  2
min J(xj ) = ζi,q − ζqmin (27)
i=1 q=1
(25)
where xj are the variables of the optimization problem, Noc
is the number of operating conditions, Nm is the number of
modes with lowest damping ratio under consideration, ζi,q is
the damping ratio of the qth mode and ith operating condition
 i [see (21)],
considering the three sets of closed loop systems A
A [see (22)], Ă [see (23)], and ζ
s t min
i i q is the qth desirable
minimum damping ratio for the qth mode.
As can be seen in (27), it is a multiobjective function as it
seeks to minimize the differences between different levels of
damping rate. Thus, different from LMI-based methods that seek
to design controllers that provide a minimum damping rate for
all eigenvalues, the HPSO-based method proposed in this article
seeks to design controllers that provide a minimum damping rate
for different eigenvalues in the system.
D. Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm
The step-by-step HPSO algorithm can be described as fol-
lows:
Step 1: Create and initialize the parameters and variables of
the optimization problem.
Step 2: Increase the iteration counter (iter) by 1 and for each
particle j calculate
vj (iter + 1) = ωj · vj (iter)
 
+ c1 · φlj · xlj (iter) − xj (iter)
+ c2 · φgj · [xg (iter) − xj (iter)] (28)
xj (iter + 1) = xj (iter) + vj (iter + 1) (29)
 Nm
Noc 
 2
J(xj ) = ζi,q − ζqmin . (30)
i=1 q=1
Step 3: Update xlj and xg .

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596
Fig. 2. IEEE 68-bus 5-area single-line diagram [37].
TABLE I
DOMINANT MODES OF THE IEEE 68-BUS 5-AREA SYSTEM
Step 4: Evaluate the condition
if |J(xlj (iter)) − J(xlj (iter − Liter ))| < 
ωj = rand(0, 1)
end.
Step 5: If iter = Niter , stop; otherwise go to Step 2.
IV. TEST RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The proposed algorithm described in Section III was ap-
plied in the IEEE 68-bus power system model, Fig. 2, the
largest benchmark system model for small-signal stability stud-
ies in [37]. This system presents 16 synchronous generators but
only generators 1–12 are equipped with a PSS and an AVR.
In [37], only one operating condition (BC: base condition) was
made available whose dominant oscillation modes are described
in Table I.
In order to assess multiple operating conditions, a second
operating point was assessed called C1 by increasing the level
of active and reactive load in areas 1 and 2 by 3% and areas 3,
4, and 5 by 6%. The dominant modes of C1 case are provided in
Table I. A modal analysis concludes that interarea modes M1 and
M5 refer to generator 14 versus generators 15 and 16, interarea
modes M2 and M4 refer to generator 15 versus generators 10 and
13, and M3 mode refers to generator 16 versus generators 14 and
16. Fig. 3 shows the dominant modes in the complex plane where
it is possible to see two pairs of modes with damping ratio lower
than 5% for the two operation conditions, one pair of modes with
damping ratio approximately equal to 10% for the two conditions
and the remaining eigenvalues present damping rates above
10%. Thus, it is desirable to improve the minimum damping
rates of these two modes by less than 5% without reducing the
damping rates of modes with rates greater than 10%. Besides,
as the WADC is based on PMU data, the WADC must be robust
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2022
Fig. 3. Dominant modes of the IEEE 68-bus 5-area system.
Fig. 4. Dominant modes of the IEEE 68-bus 5-area system with the
WADC-HPSO designed by the proposed procedure.
to different time delays in the channels and permanent losses of
one communication channel. All of these requirements are met
(31) by the HPSO method proposed in Section III and which will be
analyzed below.
A. Damping Central Control Design Stage
The WADC input and output signals were chosen based on
the controllability and observability factors of modes M1–M5
described in the Table I and taking into account that only
generators 1–12 are equipped with an AVR but the speed signals
of generators 1–16 can be estimated using PMU data. Based on
the results, the speed signals of generators 12–16 were chosen
to be the input of WADC and the control signals of generators
5 and 9–12 were chosen to be the output from WADC.
The two operating conditions of the system described in
Table I were chosen to be the limit of the load uncertainty in
the robust control design. The minimum and maximum limits
for time delays were defined as Tmin = 100 ms and Tmax = 150
ms, allowing optical fiber transmission channels [41]. As already
mentioned, only a loss of one WADC channel was considered,
and in this case, there are ten possibilities since the WADC has
five inputs and five outputs.
The proposed algorithm was applied on a machine with
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 2.40 GHz, 64 GB RAM. The HPSO
has the following parameters: Np = 20, Niter = 100,  = 0.01,
c1 = 2, and c2 = 2. The objective function has the following
parameters: Noc = 56, Nm = 3, ζ1min = 0.05, ζ2min = 0.05, and
ζ3min = 0.10. The variables of the WADC have the follow-
ing characteristics: Kmin = −30, Kmax = 30, p = 5, T 2k,m =
0.04, and T 4k,m = 0.04, k = 1, . . ., 5 and m = 1, . . ., 5. The
algorithm converged in approximately 15 min after reaching the
maximum number of iterations. The parameters of the design
BENTO: HYBRID PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR THE WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROL DESIGN
TABLE II
PARAMETERS OF THE DESIGNED WADC-HPSO
WADC-HPSO are described in Table II. Fig. 4 shows the system-
dominant modes with the WADC-HPSO designed. There are
only two eigenvalues with damping rates between 5% and 10%
for BC and C1 conditions and the rest of the eigenvalues present
damping rates above 10%.
In order to evaluate the proposed HPSO algorithm, the LMI-
based method described in [31] for the WADC design was
implemented. Although this method is capable of considering
permanent failures of the communication channels, the WADC
designed is of the same order as the plant and then order reduc-
tion techniques must be applied for the controller to be physically
implementable. Besides, another problem is that this method is
based on the conical sector of the complex plane by an angle
that defines the minimum damping desired for the closed-loop
system and thus a controller with multiple eigenvalues can be
designed in the vicinity of this damping that can compromise
the dynamic performance of the system. Methods based on
LMIs also present difficulty in convergence as the order of the
system model increases. Considering the same set of operation
points, the method based on LMIs converged only to a minimum
damping of 4.5% and the method of order reduction used caused
a reduction of the minimum damping rate to approximately
4%. Fig. 5 shows dominant modes of the IEEE 68-bus system
with the WADC-LMI designed by the method in [31]. There
are multiple eigenvalues with damping rates below 10%. It is
important to note that the application of order reduction tech-
niques can compromise the desired performance requirements
in the design stage and that is why the proposed HPSO algorithm
is promising because it aims to design a fixed-order controller
with the requirements of performance at the design stage.
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597
Fig. 5. Dominant modes of the IEEE 68-bus 5-area system with the
WADC-LMI designed by the method [31].
TABLE III
RESULTS OF THE SIMULATIONS OF THE HPSO AND PSO ALGORITHMS
B. Sensitivity Study
When using methods based on metaheuristics to solve op-
timization problems, it is common to perform an analysis of
the methods proposed for different simulations and evaluate
the results achieved. Thus, the proposed HPSO algorithm was
simulated 100 times for Np = 10 (G1), Np = 20 (G2), and
Np = 50 (G3). As the key to the proposed algorithm is the
operator that acts on the inertia weight (ω), the algorithm without
the action of this operator (traditional PSO) was simulated 100
times for ω = 0.2 (G4), ω = 0.5 (G5), and ω = 0.7 (G6). The
results of minimum (ζmin ), average (ζavg ), maximum (ζmax ),
and standard deviation (SD) values of the closed-loop damping
ratio and the number of controllers (N5% ) designed to provide
damping rates greater than 5% are shown in Table III. The results
allow the following assessments.
r The controllers designed by the proposed HPSO algorithm
had the highest values of objective function (G1, G2, and
G3). The fact that the inertia weight (ω) varies according to
the mutation operator provided better results of objective
function in relation to the cases (G4, G5, and G6) when it
is considered fixed.
r As the number of particles increases, better results of
objective function are obtained. However, the proposed
HPSO algorithm with the smallest number of particles
provided better results than the traditional algorithm with
the largest number of particles.
r There are results from controllers designed by the tradi-
tional PSO that did not provide the desired damping rate
of 5% for the closed-loop system.
Fig. 6 shows dominant modes of the system with the WADC-
PSO designed by the traditional PSO (ω = 0.7). There are
eigenvalues with damping rates below 10%.
598
Fig. 6. Dominant modes of the IEEE 68-bus 5-area system with the
WADC-PSO designed by the method [39].
Fig. 7. Angular deviation of generators 14 and 16. (a) C1-S1. (b) C1-
S2. (c) C1-S3. (d) C1-S4. (e) C1-S5. (f) C1-S6.
C. Time-Domain Nonlinear Simulations
The WADCs designed by linear models and described in
the last section were evaluated through nonlinear time-domain
simulations using the ANATEM software [42] considering a set
of operating conditions and scenarios.
Two operating conditions were evaluated: condition C1 de-
scribed in Table I and condition C2 (the same load level as
condition C1 and without the transmission lines 31–53). Six
scenarios were assessed: S1 (100 ms time delay on all WADC
channels), S2 (150 ms time delay on all WADC channels), S3
(different time delays on WADC channels), S4 (100 ms time
delay on all WADC channels and permanent loss of the speed
signal of generator 13), S5 (150 ms time delay on all WADC
channels and permanent loss of the speed signal of generator
14), and S6 (different time delays in the WADC channels and
permanent loss of the speed signal of generator 14). Considering
Ti,c the time delay at the input i of the WADC on channel c and
To,c the time delay on the output o of the WADC on channel c,
the different time delays of scenarios S3 and S6 were as follows:
Ti,12 = 0.112 s, Ti,13 = 0.128 s, Ti,14 = 0.103 s, Ti,15 = 0.146
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, JANUARY 2022
Fig. 8. Angular deviation of generators 15 and 16. (a) C2-S1. (b) C2-
S2. (c) C2-S3. (d) C2-S4. (e) C2-S5. (f) C2-S6.
s, Ti,16 = 0.134 s, To,5 = 0.107 s, To,9 = 0.139 s, To,10 = 0.116
s, To,11 = 0.120 s, and To,12 = 0.147 s.
Fig. 7(a)–(f) shows the angular deviation of generators 14
and 16 for C1 case when a 100-ms temporary three-phase fault-
circuit was applied to bus 40 considering the six scenarios (S1–
S6) of the WADC operation for the three controllers: the WADC-
HPSO designed by the hybrid PSO, the WADC-PSO designed
by the traditional PSO, and the WADC-LMI designed by the
LMI-based procedure presented in [31]. Fig. 8(a)–(f) shows the
angular deviation of generators 15 and 16 for C2 case for the
same scenarios and when a 100-ms temporary three-phase fault-
circuit was applied to bus 49. Based on the results, the power
system with the designed controller (WADC-HPSO) provided a
better damping performance than WADC-LMI and WADC-PSO
when modifications occurred in the nominal load condition, on
the time delay of the WADC channels. In addition, the angular
responses for the cases with the WADC-HPSO were stable with a
good damping ratio when one permanent communication failure
occurs.
V. CONCLUSION
This article proposed a HPSO algorithm for the WADC de-
sign to improve the damping rates of low-frequency oscillation
modes considering power system operating uncertainties, varia-
tions in the time delay, and robustness to a permanent failure of
one WADC communication channel. The following conclusions
can be made.
1) Variations in time delays and the loss of a WADC com-
munication channel can affect the dynamics of the power
system operation, and highlight the need for its consider-
ation in the WADC design stage.
2) The use of a multiobjective optimization model for the
control design resulted in two modes for each point of
BENTO: HYBRID PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR THE WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROL DESIGN
operation with damping rates between 5% and 10% while
the LMI method resulted in five modes in the same
interval.
3) In a sensitivity analysis, 100% of the executions of the
HPSO algorithm resulted in WADCs with damping rates
above 5% while the traditional PSO presented at least
46% WADC with damping rates below 5%.
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