Industrial Internet of Things Driven by SDN Platform for Smart Grid Resiliency

Software defined networking (SDN) is a key enabling technology of industrial Internet of things (IIoT) that provides dynamic reconfiguration to improve data network robustness. In the context of smart grid infrastructure, the strong demand of seamless data transmission during critical events (e.g. failures or natural disturbances) seems to be fundamentally shifting energy attitude towards emerging technology. Therefore, SDN will play a vital role on energy revolution to enable flexible interfacing between smart utility domains and facilitate the integration of mix renewable energy resources to deliver efficient power of sustainable grid. In this regard, we propose a new SDN platform based on IIoT technology to support resiliency by reacting immediately whenever a failure occurs to recover smart grid networks using real-time monitoring techniques. We employ SDN controller to achieve multi-functionality control and optimization challenge by providing operators with real-time data monitoring to manage demand, resources and increasing system reliability. Data processing will be used to manage resources at local network level by employing SDN switch segment, which is connected to SDN controller though IIoT aggregation node. Furthermore, we address different scenarios to control packet flows between switches on hub-to-hub basis using traffic indicators of the infrastructure layer, in addition to any other data from the application layer. Extensive experimental simulation is conducted to demonstrate the validation of the proposed platform model. The experimental results prove the innovative SDN based IIoT solutions can improve grid reliability for enhancing smart grid resilience

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Enabling digital grid for industrial revolution: self-healing cyber resilient platform

The key market objectives driving digital grid development are to provide sustainable, reliable and secure network systems that can support variety of applications against any potential cyber attacks. Therefore, there is an urgent demand to accelerate the development of intelligent Software-Defined Networking (SDN) platform that can address the tremendous challenges of data protection for digital resiliency. Modern grid technology tends to adopt distributed SDN controllers for further slicing power grid domain and protect the boundaries of electric data at network edges. To accommodate these issues, this article proposes an intelligent secure SDN controller for supporting digital grid resiliency, considering management coordination capability, to enable self-healing features and recovery of network traffic forwarding during service interruptions. A set of advanced features are employed in grid controllers to configure the network elements in response to possible disasters or link failures. In addition, various SDN topology scenarios are introduced for efficient coordination and configurations of network domains. Finally, to justify the potential advantages of intelligent secure SDN system, a case study is presented to evaluate the requirements of secure digital modern grid networks and pave the path towards the next phase of industry revolution

A Software Defined Networking Architecture for DDoS-Attack in the storage of Multi-Microgrids

Multi-microgrid systems can improve the resiliency and reliability of the power system network. Secure communication for multi-microgrid operation is a crucial issue that needs to be investigated. This paper proposes a multi-controller software defined networking (SDN) architecture based on fog servers in multi-microgrids to improve the electricity grid security, monitoring and controlling. The proposed architecture defines the support vector machine (SVM) to detect the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in the storage of microgrids. The information of local SDN controllers on fog servers is managed and supervised by the master controller placed in the application plane properly. Based on the results of attack detection, the power scheduling problem is solved and send a command to change the status of tie and sectionalize switches. The optimization application on the cloud server implements the modified imperialist competitive algorithm (MICA) to solve this stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear problem. The effective performance of the proposed approach using an SDN-based architecture is evaluated through applying it on a multi-microgrid based on IEEE 33-bus radial distribution system with three microgrids in simulation results

Unleash narrowband technologies for industrial Internet of Things services

As the industrial market grows, it is becoming noticeable that there are many industrial Internet of things (IIoT) use cases for which existing technology cannot meet the huge demand of machine connectivity. For example, in the utility market, there is a strong trend to adopt new technology that can support positive business use case scenarios for efficient system operation and elaborate the dramatic increase of the services demands. Apart from this, most utility grid applications required long-range, low-power, secure, and reliable communications, which means narrowband (NB) technology can be the dominant choice. To address these challenges, this article provides a new framework architecture to enable technical decision makers to plan for NB-IIoT. Moreover, we highlight the key aspects of NB technology by focusing on the challenges, standardization, and requirements to facilitate the IIoT connectivity for industry revolutions. The motivation behind employing NB is to provide a high level of reliability, and better quality of service, and coverage. In particular, the article addresses the main applications of utility use cases under the NB umbrella, which can perform as a good bridge between utility services and the fundamental communication infrastructure. The utility use cases based on emerging technology can support the full array of smart grid services that are required for both central and distributed operation systems. Finally, the article provides connectivity solutions for potential IIoT deployment aiming to define a new roadmap for NB technology on specific industrial use cases