Comparative study of Wireless Sensor Network standards for application in Electrical Substations

Abstract

Power utilities around the world are modernizing their grid by adding layers of communication capabilities to allow for more advanced control, monitoring and preventive maintenance. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), due to their ease of deployment, low cost and flexibility, are considered as a solution to provide diagnostics information about the health of the connected devices and equipment in the electrical grid. However, in specific environments such as high voltage substations, the equipment in the grid produces a strong and specific radio noise, which is impulsive in nature. The robustness of off-the-shelf equipment to this type of noise is not guaranteed; it is therefore important to analyze the characteristics of devices, algorithms and protocols to understand whether they are suited to such harsh environments. In this paper, we review several WSN standards: 6LoWPAN, Zigbee, WirelessHART, ISA100.11a and OCARI. Physical layer specifications (IEEE 802.15.4) are similar for all standards, with considerable architectural differences present in the higher layers. The purpose of this paper is to determine the appropriate WSN standard that could support reliable communication in the impulsive noise environment, in electrical substations. Our review concludes that the WirelessHART sensor network is one of the most suitable to be implemented in a harsh impulsive noise environment.

A Survey on Industrial Internet With ISA100 Wireless

“…In [21], the authors try to identify standards which are able to support reliable communication in electrical substations under impulsive noise. They report on several standards -ISA100 Wireless, 6LoWPAN, ZigBee, WirelessHART, OCARI (Open Communication protocol for Ad hoc Reliable industrial Instrumentation) -and they note that the lower layer attributes are similar for all the selected standards (IEEE 802.15.4), with considerable structural diversity existing in the higher layers.…”

“…Due to the fact that IEC standards hold a better visibility and adoption outside the US, ISA100 Wireless received IEC approval in 2014 as ISO/IEC 62734. In this form, the standard is able to define the specifications complying to the OSI Basic Reference Model (ISO/IEC 7498-1), and, according to [21], the manufacturers of ISA100 Wireless did not provide to the standard a built-in interoperability. However, due to the fact that the standard can employ 6LoWPAN in order to handle IPv6 (Internet) traffic, it is also able to achieve compatibility with the industrial Internet.…”

“…In [38], ZigBee, WirelessHART and ISA100 Wireless are introduced as typical industrial wireless standards, and activities of international standardization and regional radio regulations are shown. Also in [21] the authors review 6LoWPAN, Zigbee, WirelessHART, ISA100 Wireless and OCARI. All those standards assume the same physical layer technology, but bring in significant architectural diversity in the higher layers.…”

Critical review on slope monitoring systems with a vision of unifying WSN and IoT

“…Therefore, more than 30 million WirelessHART devices have been set up throughout the world. This protocol standard is reliable when rebuilt with changes suggested in IEEE 802.15.4e [98]. Zigbee is a very efficient protocol, which possesses 16 channels.…”

“…It is a cost‐effective and power effective solution. ISA100.11a is similar to WirelessHART in terms of the applications it can be set up with and in terms of architecture [98]. 6LoWPAN is a low power personal area network [99, 100] using which IP devices and networks can be directly interfaced with each other.…”