Contact: Miroslav Popovic
In the near future EPFL is planning to deploy campus-widesmart grid infrastructure.
The goal of the communication network prototype is to ensure communication between sites equipped with Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and the electrical network state estimator.
In the beginning, EPFL infrastructure will be exploited. Existing twisted pair cabling will connect measurement and control endpoints. Later on, wireless infrastructure will be designed to facilitate system deployment on sites which, unlike EPFL, do not dispose widely deployed cabling.
Having in mind sensitive nature of the system that communication network should support, it is questionable whether wireless infrastructure can support timing and reliablity requirements.
In our previous work we deployed a test system with directional antennas. In the next phase we will perform extensive measurements to evaluate correlation between packet losses on parallel paths in different scenarios.
You can find more details about the project here.