Deploying 5G architecture for protection systems in smart distribution grids

The evolution in 5G has seen innovative applications in sectors such as energy, transport, manufacturing and healthcare. Within the energy system, several applications have been defined that can benefit from 5G low latency services and enabling technologies such as mobile edge computing (MEC). However, energy applications have requirements that need to be clearly identified to be able to be realized in the 5G communication system. In this paper, we present power protection system applications in smart distribution grids and their 5G service requirements. We focus on differential protection applications and highlight the challenges in deriving latency requirements to meet the protection application requirements. Finally, we propose a 5G MEC architecture for differential protection applications and show the different deployment architectures that can be realized in a 5G system.