Feasibility Analysis of Bluetooth 5 for Real-Time Data Transmission in High-Voltage AC and DC Substations

In the past, there have been some practical experiments to study the effect of radio interference and high impulse noise affecting some selected wireless communications protocols in substation environments. However, in the technical literature there are no practical studies to analyze the effect of such interferences in Bluetooth low energy (BLE) or Bluetooth 5 wireless communications. Hence, a suitable Bluetooth 5 system-on-chip module has been proposed for implementation in electrical substations. Correspondingly, a Raspberry Pi 3 (Central) was chosen to act as a gateway. The wireless connectivity between these two elements was tested under very intense corona conditions, which were generated by means of a controlled needle-to-plate corona air gap. The corona discharges were conducted by using high-voltage AC, positive DC and negative DC generators. Different experiments were conducted by changing the distance between wireless device and the corona region. Experimental results presented in this work shows the high immunity level of Bluetooth 5 in front of corona discharges, thus ensuring a suitable behavior of this wireless system in substations.