Research On Communication Technologies For Distribution Automation

Communication is an important component of distribution automation system, which is considered to be a necessary method of achieving transportation, acquisition, and control of remote terminals digital information by the distribution network control center. It plays an important role in distribution automation system constitution and function realization. There are many communication technologies to realize distribution automation system. That is optical fiber communication, power line communication and wireless communication. A single communication technology is not allowed to be used, caused by the demands and features of distribution automation. The system real-time performance, reliability and availability are greatly influenced by the different communication technologies, solution project. The cost of constitution, operation and maintenance are different as well.In this paper, we proposed the structure, function and usage of distribution automation, and summarized the distribution automation communication system overall requirements and features. Distribution automation communication protocols are then studied, and distribution automation communication requirements analysis is accomplished. In communication technologies, optical fiber private communication, power line communication, wireless public network and wireless private network are focused on. The communication theory, technical characteristics, networking, performance of these communication technologies are discussed. Based on the research and comparison of the networking and performance of these common communication technologies, take a distribution automation communication system of Ethernet Passive Optical Network(EPON) as an example. Then the case is analyzed from communication medium, network structure, communication interfaces, bandwidth, service protection, and construction costs. A communication encryption for the communication security which based on the AES algorithm is proposed. The availability of the topology and construction costs of EPON distribution network communication is analyzed. At last, the appropriate EPON topology of the distribution automation communication is found. And it is considered to have a reference value for renovation project of distribution automation communication system currently.