A network design algorithm for multicast communication architectures in smart transmission grids

In future smart transmission grids, there are distributed applications that will benefit from the deployment of Internet Protocol (IP) multicast technology for communication. Sharing of Routable-Sample Values (R-SV) and Routable-GOOSE among the digital substations for wide-area monitoring, protection, and control (WAMPAC) applications will be needed. Using multicast for distribution of R-SVs is resource-efficient and offers a simpler configuration with only the interested substations needing reconfiguration. However, the demands for such concurrent delivery of R-SV data will put constraints on the underlying supporting networking infrastructure. For example, it must be ensured that the paths taken to route data traffic are within the bounds of delay to achieve the aims of the WAMPAC application. In this paper, we look at the problem of network topology augmentation through link additions. We present a heuristic algorithm that finds a set of links to be added to a network topology such that the multicast distribution tree for a multicast configuration is bounded by latency, which is set as the hop-count threshold. Our results show that by adding a few new links to the network topology, the delay incurred by the multicast traffic from sources to destinations can be reduced.