Priority Differentiation Dataset

Wide area control (WAC) in smart grid requires low-latency communications across the grid to transfer various control commands and Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) measurements. Smart grid communications are generally implemented between multiple control centers, transformer substations and control centers, and power plants and control centers. While there have been a number of international standards for smart grid communications, detailed methods have not been specified in existing standards for low-latency transmission of different types of application data, particularly high-priority control commands, between control centers. To fulfill this requirement, a priority differentiation approach is presented in this paper for low-latency communications between control centers. With two application-layer queues, it incorporates a cross-layer design between the application layer and data-link layer to keep the delay of high-priority packets to the possible minimum. Simulation results in typical scenarios show a reduced communication latency of about 45% for high-priority packets when our approach is incorporated with existing communication technologies.