SDN-based Resilience Solutions for Smart Grids

Due to the nature of heterogeneity and distributed control, the existing electric power/data communication network based on Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) has been unable to meet the requirements of dynamic resource allocation and fine-grained traffic monitoring in smart grids. The OpenFlow-based Software Defined Network (SDN) allows operators dynamically control and monitor the whole network using the software running on the operating system of the centralized controller (e.g., NOX controller). And NOX controller can dynamically configure end-to-end paths. Thus in this paper, we propose SDN-based resilience solutions for the scenarios of network expansion and fault in smart grids. The feasibility and efficiency of the proposed resilience solutions is verified, especially, the performances, such as the CPU utilization of NOX controller and end-to-end delay, are quantitatively evaluated in our experimental platform. The experimental results indicate that the dynamic end-to-end path restoration can be achieved within tens of milliseconds by using our SDN-based resilience solutions.