Comparison between wired versus wireless mode of digital protection scheme leveraging on PRP topology

Applications of Digital communication in power systems have undergone revolutionary changes in the last decade due to the advancement in technology encompassing substation automation system (SAS). The reasons for veering away from traditional copper based secondary wiring for protection schemes to Ethernet and fiber optic (FO) include economic gains, faster project delivery, ease of diagnostics, less engineering and design efforts. However, digital systems still comprise some challenges such as latencies, data losses, and packet clogging during high traffic. Errors in packets transmission and associated difficulties in publication and subscription of generic object-oriented substation events (GOOSE) and sampled value (SV) packets in a Wide Area Network (WAN) substation based on IEC 62439-3 protocol call for a detailed investigation. This paper compares the performance of wired and wireless mode of digital secondary scheme based on simulation and physical set up leveraging on Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP) topology. It presents different scenarios for SV packets in a process bus and provides analysis to the data packet transmission due to traffic and network clogging in wired and wireless topologies.