Software defined networking for resilient communications in Smart Grid active distribution networks

Emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology provides excellent flexibility to large-scale networks in terms of control, management, security, and maintenance. In this paper, we propose an SDN-based communication infrastructure for Smart Grid distribution networks among substations. A Smart Grid communication infrastructure consists of a large number of heterogenous devices that exchange real-time information for monitoring the status of the grid. We then investigate how SDN-enabled Smart Grid infrastructure can provide resilience to active distribution substations with self-recovery. Specifically, by introducing redundant and wireless communication links that can be used during the emergencies, we show that SDN controllers can be effective for restoring the communication while providing a lot of flexibility. Furthermore, to be able to effectively evaluate the performance of the proposed work in terms of various fine-grained network metrics, we developed a Mininet-based testing framework and integrated it with ns-3 network simulator. Finally, we conducted experiments by using actual Smart Grid communication data to assess the recovery performance of the proposed SDN-based system. The results show that SDN is a viable technology for the Smart Grid communications with almost negligible delays in switching to backup wireless links during the times of link failures in reliable fashion.