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Reliability Evaluation of the Communication Network in Wide-Area Protection

Zhi-Hui Dai, Student Member, IEEE, Zeng-Ping Wang, and Yan-Jun Jiao
AbstractVarious principles and algorithms of the wide-area protection system (WAPS) have been developed so far. However, there are few discussions about the foundation in implementation of the WAPS (i.e., the corresponding communication system and its reliability). This paper presents a reliability evaluation method for the communication systems in wide-area protection (CSWAP). First, system structure and characteristics of the CSWAP are hierarchically analyzed from layers of substation communication, regional communication, and wide-area communication. The reliability model based on fault-tree analysis for each layer is then established. Second, three reliability indices are introduced. Third, an index calculation method based on sequential Monte Carlo simulation is proposed, which adopts the idea of static handling, takes into account faults and repairs of components, and overcomes several disadvantages of analytical methods, such as complicated calculation and weak adaptability. Finally, a case of the CSWAP in the IEEE 11-bus system is analyzed to summarize the effect factors of its reliability and demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. The results show that the models have denite physical signicance, and the proposed method is helpful for quantitative reliability assessment, inuencing factor analysis, and weakness identication. Index TermsCommunication system, fault-tree analysis, reliability evaluation, sequential Monte Carlo simulation, wide-area protection.

Intelligent electronic device. Interface unit. Local protection center. Network bridge. Phasor measurement unit. Router. System protection terminal. System protection center. Switch. Server. Station layer. Synchronous digital hierarchy. Sequential Monte Carlo simulation. I. INTRODUCTION HE WIDE-AREA protection system (WAPS) has received extensive attention since it was proposed, especially with the rapid improvement of the wide-area measurement system (WAMS) and the digital substation technology, which provides an opportunity and potential to implement it and enhance the performance of protection systems. Currently, research about WAPS mainly focuses on the following three aspects [1][6]: 1) online adaptive computing and verication of protection settings by tracking operation modes of the power system; 2) preventing chain trips of backup protections by recognition large-scale ow transfer and faults, with the help of regional stability control system; and 3) wide-area backup protection centering on the identication of fault equipment, which also takes advantage of the PMU/WAMS. As the basis of wide-area protection, wide-area and local communication technologies are increasingly mature and stable with the booming development of the digital substation and the digital power grid. Currently, optical-ber communication, which serves as the foundation of the real-time communication, has been widely used in major power plants and substations. For example, in China, a nationwide communication system consisting of three transverse and four lengthwise backbone networks has been set up, and the national electric power three-level data network has been put into operation gradually, which connects the national dispatch and control center, regional dispatch centers, and provincial dispatch centers. With these supports, it is meaningful and necessary to research the

NOMENCLATURE Asynchronous transfer mode. Bay layer. Bi-direction, ring structure, and dual-passing optic ber. Communication system in wide-area protection. Exchange layer. Ethernet interface. Optic ber. Fault-tree analysis.
Manuscript received November 07, 2010; revised March 16, 2011; accepted May 12, 2011. Date of publication July 05, 2011; date of current version October 07, 2011. This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China. Paper no. TPWRD-00854-2010. Z.-H. Dai and Y.-J. Jiao are with the North China Electric Power University, Baoding City 071003, Hebei Province, China (e-mail: protectiverelaying@163. com). Z.-P. Wang is with the North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China. Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRD.2011.2157948

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network architecture, implementation details, and reliability of the communication system in wide-area protection (CSWAP). However, corresponding discussions are still rare. On the other hand, methods widely used in the reliability assessment of wide-area communication networks, including the Markov method, network method, minimum path set method [7][13], and so on still need improvement. For example, the network method could be used to calculate probabilities related to system reliability by analyzing the series-parallel relation of components, yet it has poor universality and could not reect the repair process independently. For the Markov method, on the one hand, basic events in the CSWAP would not necessarily obey exponential distribution required in the Markov method; on the other hand, the state division is complex, especially while the topological relationships should be taken into account simultaneously. Because of the aforementioned issues, the methods for reliability modeling and quantitative analysis are proposed based on hierarchical analysis of the CSWAP. This paper is organized as follows. The system structure and characteristics of the CSWAP are analyzed from layers of substation communication, regional communication, and wide-area communication in Section II. Section III presents FTA reliability models of the CSWAP. Section IV describes three reliability indices of the CSWAP to provide a quantitative basis for analyzing system failures, components failures, and their impact on the system. Section V gives an index solution based on sequential Monte Carlo simulation and the structure function of fault tree for quantitatively analyzing reliability of the CSWAP. An application is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in Section VI. Conclusions are given in Section VII. II. STRUCTURE OF THE CSWAP The digital power grid requires high-speed and accurate communication among an intelligent control module, specic devices, substations, and dispatch center. Similarly, the characteristics of the WAPS determine that its communication system should meet several basic requirements, such as: 1) communication channels being at least logically independent; 2) maximizing the use of mature and versatile communication technology to facilitate technology upgrades and reducing cost; 3) supporting priority denition of information; 4) intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) having the initiative to send data (i.e., the event-driven mode); and 5) reducing intermediate links to minimize the communication delay [14][18]. Paper [19] proposed a novel communication network for three-level WAPS, which would be introduced here rst along with the viewpoint of paper [20]. 1) The lower layer consisting of PMUs and the system protection terminals (SPT) in substations and power plants is responsible for collecting information and enforcing control command. The PMUs collecting information are located in the station level (SL); the SPT interacting with the power system is in the processing level. 2) The middle layer mainly includes several local protection centers (LPCs). Each LPC provides the functionality of regional protection and uploads necessary information to the upper layer. In limited wide-area protection [20], the wide-area power grid was divided into several limited zones based on the optimization of

Fig. 1. Communication network topology of WAPS.

communication information, and the tripping strategy. An important substation in each limited zone is selected as the center, which is called the LPC. Other substations in each limited zone collect measurement and status information, communicate only with the corresponding LPC, and receive remote control. 3) The upper layer is a system protection center (SPC), which receives data from LPCs, and processes and sends control commands to SPT. The equipment of all layers receives global positioning system (GPS) signals to ensure system-wide data synchronization. In general, the communication system could be divided into the internal communication of substation and communication among substations, the former is the local-area network (LAN) communication and the latter belongs to wide-area communication. Based on the aforementioned analysis, the CSWAP is divided into three parts in this paper (i.e., LAN communication system in substations, regional communication systems, and wide-area backbone communication systems). The widearea backbone communication system mainly performs communication tasks between LPC and SPC; the regional communication system consisting of LPC, regional communication networks with a number of substations could be a star or ring network. The topology of the CSWAP is shown in Fig. 1. III. FTA-BASED HIERARCHICAL RELIABILITY MODEL OF THE CSWAP The reliability of the CSWAP has the capability of completing the following tasks within a specic time slice: 1) the synchronal measurement devices could monitor and send accurate information completely to the control-center server through communication networks and 2) the control center could handle real-time analysis and send control command in time. In order to reect different functional requirements, network reliability could be divided into connection reliability and circulation reliability. Circulation reliability consists of timeliness, integrity, and correctness. Considering that the circulation reliability involves information ows of the WAPS, of which there is no well-agreed conclusion, this paper mainly focuses on the assessment of the connection reliability. The hierarchical structure of the CSWAP is shown in Fig. 2, and on this basis, the hierarchical reliability model of the CSWAP could be built by means of fault-tree analysis (FTA). FTA is a well-known safety-analysis methodology [21]. It was developed for technical systems to analyze whether they pose a hazard (top event). The top event is noted at the root of the fault tree. Events which cause the hazard are given in the child

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Fig. 4. FTA model of the station layer.

Fig. 2. Hierarchical structure of WAPS communication system reliability.

Fig. 5. FTA model of the ring-exchange layer.

Fig. 3. Internal communication topology of substations.

nodes and analyzed recursively, resulting in a tree of events. Each analyzed event (main event) is connected to its causes (subevents) by a gate in the fault tree. The leaves of the tree (basic events) are failure modes at the component level. These failures have to occur in certain combinations (corresponding to the AND/OR structure of the tree), before the top event can occur (i.e., the system fails). A. Reliability of the Substation Communication Network The architecture of the substation automation system is changing with the application of electronic current/voltage transformers, intelligent breakers, and industrial Ethernet technology. It is, to a certain extent, reected by the changes in the communication network. In digital substations, the communication network is introduced in the process level, and becomes the bridge of data transmission and information exchange between second devices. The communication topology of the IEC61850 standards-based substation is shown in Fig. 3, which mainly includes switches (SW), Ethernet interfaces (EM), optic bers (FI), routers (RU), servers (SER), and other components. Generally, the internal communication network of substations could also be divided into three layers: 1) the station layer (SL); 2) the exchange layer (EL); and 3) the bay layer (BL). 1) The station layer network corresponds to the control layer in IEC61850, which mainly includes PMUs, routers, servers, and bers. 2) The exchange layer network mainly consists of station switches, bay switches, and bers between switches. Star and ring networks should be assessed, respectively, in this layer. 3) The bay-layer network mainly covers Ethernet interfaces of IEDs, SPTs, and bers. 1) FTA-Based Reliability Model of the Station Layer: The station-layer communication network mainly includes a server, , and a router, bers between the server and switches, . The corresponding bers between the router and switches FTA reliability model is shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 6. FTA model of the star-exchange layer.

2) FTA-Based Reliability Model of the Exchange Layer: a) Model of the ring exchange layer: For a substation with bays, the corresponding ring-exchange layer communication network consists of bay switches, one control bers. Suppose that if any two bers in switch, and the ring network fail simultaneously, the exchange layer network fails (three or more bers failing simultaneously is rare). It could be easily presented by using the Vote gate in FTA shown in Fig. 5. b) The model of the star-exchange layer network: Suppose there are bays in a substation, the corresponding starexchange layer network consists of bay switches, one substation switch, and bers. The model is shown in Fig. 6. 3) FTA-Based Reliability Model of the Bay Layer: Suppose there are bays, and each bay consists of Ethernet interfaces and bers. The FTA reliability model is presented in Fig. 7. B. Communication Network Reliability Model of the LPC The main function of the LPC is to collect and collate information from substations within a responsible region, and forward it to the SPC through network equipment, such as network bridges (NBs). If there are a large number of substations in a region or IEDs in a substation, the communication network could be segmented into discrete networks with NB or routers between them in order to alleviate congestion. routers, asynchronous transfer mode switches, SDH equipment, and so on.

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Fig. 7. FTA model of the bay layer. Fig. 10. Structure of the bi-direction, ring-structure, and dual-passing opticber backbone network.

Fig. 8. Communication structure of the LPC.

Fig. 11. Communication reliability FTA model of the backbone network.

reliability model of the ring regional network could be similarly built. The models built above show us that the FTA-based reliability model of the CSWAP could accurately reect the topological relations of the components, while its structure is concise and scalable. IV. RELIABILITY INDICES OF THE CSWAP
Fig. 9. Communication reliability FTA model of the LPC.

Referring to paper [22], a certain LPC consisting of four network bridges is shown in Fig. 8, where , there are ve minimum path sets , , , and . The failure of any component in a path set would result in the failure of a corresponding path set. Suppose that if all of the former four-path sets fail, or the fth-path set fails, the communication network of LPC fails. The reliability model of the LPC is shown in Fig. 9. C. Reliability of the Wide-Area Backbone Network and Regional Network Currently, the communication backbone network of the power system is mainly the SDH ring network. We take the bi-direction, ring-structure, and dual-passing optic-ber (BRDOF) network shown in Fig. 10 as an example to build its FTA reliability model. According to the characteristics of the aforementioned backbone network, we suppose that if any one of the interface units (IUs) connected to LPC/SPC fails or two pairs of the DRDOFs fail simultaneously, the backbone network fails. The corresponding FTA reliability model is shown in Fig. 11. The

In this part, three indices (i.e., cumulative failure probability, steady-state availability, and component probability importance) are introduced to provide a quantitative basis for analyzing system failures, components failures, and their impact on the CSWAP. : The 1) Cumulative Failure Probability Function gives the cumulative probability that the system fails given the system operation at in (1) where random variable is the time to system failure. 2) Steady-State Availability : The steady-state availability index giving long-running reliability of the CSWAP could be mathematically expressed by (2) 3) Component Probability Importance Index : In order to analyze the effect of component failure rate change on system failure rate, the component probability importance index is introduced to identify components that signicantly impair the reliability of the CSWAP. It is dened as the partial derivative of system unreliability with respect to the failure probability of component [23] (3)

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where

is the failure probability of component at time , ; is the system failure probability at time ; is the system structure function. Here, is the unreliability of the system since component has failed. is the unreliability of the system given Similarly, that component i is working. V. MODEL SOLUTION METHOD BASED ON SEQUENTIAL MONTE CARLO SIMULATION A. Monte Carlo Simulation Technique The Monte Carlo simulation technique based on the law of large numbers [24] reects the system reliability by calculating the statistical characteristics of samples. It is not sensitive to the dimensions of problems and has strong adaptability and problem-solving ability. There are two basic kinds of Monte Carlo methods: sequential Monte Carlo simulation (SMC) and nonsequential Monte Carlo simulation (NSMC). SMC provides a convenient and attractive approach to compute the posterior distributions. It could be used to calculate time-dependent reliability indices by simulating time-dependent factors and the state transition process of system components (operation time and fault duration). Several methodologies for composite reliability evaluation using SMC have been proposed [25], [26]. B. Structure Function of the Fault Tree The structure function of a system can be mathematically expressed by (4) is the state vector of where basic components. The binary-state variable denotes the state of component . C. Simulation Process The structure function of the fault tree is a single-valued function which expresses the static logic of the system, so it is necessary to divide the simulation time into several small time intervals during which the state of the basic event is kept unchanged, especially while the dynamic process of failure and repair needs to be considered. After this static handling process, system-level simulation will be performed in each time interval. Provided that once the fault is checked, repair begins. The static handling and simulation method is described as follows [25]. Providing the FTA model consists of basic events. The th and repair time , of basic random sampling failure time event are given in (5) and (6), respectively (5) (6) (7) The point estimation of CFP could be obtained by In (7), is the sampling time series of the th basic event, 0. , are the th numbers of the stochastic sequence and , respectively. is the failure distribution function of (12) (11)
Fig. 12. System sequential state transition diagram.

the th basic event, and is the repair distribution function of the th basic event. can be sorted by its value as shown The time series

(8) is the maximum time of single simulation. where The sequence could be represented by Fig. 12. The single SMC simulation process in detail is given as follows. Step 1) Set all basic events in normal operation status, the 0, the time-interval of normal simulation timer 0, the counter of normal operation operation 0, failure time-interval 0, and failure 0. Set the maximum simulation time counter . Step 2) Start the simulation according to (5)(8), and let 1. , determine the Step 3) states of basic events and the state of CSWAP in this time-interval according to the system , if structure function , then the system , let and 0. is normal, record and let 0. Go to Step Otherwise, record 4). , if (9) is satised, go back to step Step 4) 3). Otherwise, go to Step 5) (9) Step 5) Terminate simulation, calculate reliability indices. MTTR and MTBF are calculated by

(10)

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TABLE II COMPONENT PROBABILITY IMPORTANCE INDICES OF THE SUBSTATION

TABLE III COMPONENT PROBABILITY IMPORTANCE INDICES OF LPC1 Fig. 13. CSWAP in the IEEE 11-bus system.

TABLE I AVAILABILITY OF COMMUNICATION LAYERS IN THE SUBSTATION

where is the simulation times when . After repeated simulations, the convergent value of each reliability index is statistically analyzed. VI. STUDY CASE Taking the IEEE 11-bus system as an example, the schematic diagram of its communication network consists of two regional networksArea 1 and Area 2as shown in Fig. 13. In Fig. 13, substations 8 and 9 are the local protection centers, LPC1 and LPC2, respectively. Their FTA models could be built according to Fig. 9. The backbone network consists of LPC1, LPC2, the SPC, and other SDH devices. Ring topology is introduced in the local communication network of Areas 1 and 2. The remaining substation equipment accesses the LPC with SDH equipment. Providing components of the same type have the same failure rate, and the failures of the basic events obey one-parameter exponential distribution. A. Reliability Analysis of the Substation Network Provided that there are four bays, one router, and one server in each substation, and two Ethernet interfaces of IED in each bay, the failure rates of components are shown as follows: , , , , and , and the MTTR of bers is 24 h, and that of other components is 48 h. Reliability models of the substation communication network with the ring and star-exchange layer are built, respectively, in accordance with Section III. Reliability indices of the substation are calculated according to Section V. The total simulation time is set to 40 years (350 400 h), and the availability of each layer and substation communication network is shown in Table I. It could be seen from Table I that with the same failure rates and maintenance level, the long-term reliability of the substation with the ring bay layer is higher than that of the substation with the star bay layer. To nd the weak links, we take the ring network as an example to obtain the results of the component probability impor-

tance index shown in Table II. It can be seen that: 1) for the station layer, the component probability importance of the ber is the lowest when its repair time is half that of the server and the router, although its failure rate is the highest. It shows important signicance toward enhancing the system reliability by reducing repair time and improving the maintenance level. With the aforementioned failure rates, the router is the weak link of the station layer. 2) For the bay layer, the probability importance of the ber is higher than that of the Ethernet interface, so the reliability improvement of the ber is benecial to the improvement of the reliability of the bay layer. B. Reliability Analysis of the LPC Communication Network Based on Figs. 8 and 13, we assumed that the communication network of LPC1 consists of four network bridges, 1 ATM switch, 1 SDH device, and several bers; the network of LPC2 contains three network bridges, 1 ATM switch, 1 SHD device, and several bers. Take LPC1 as an example, the communication reliability model based on FTA is shown in Fig. 9, the failure rates of components are as follows: , , , . The availability of LPC1 and LPC2 is 0.998327 and 0.998331, respectively. Comparative analysis shows that while the fth communication path set is dominant (could be seen from the topology and failure criterion in reliability model of the LPC), the impact of the number of substations connected to the LPC on the communication reliability is not obvious. The results of component probability importance are shown in Table III. The component probability importance indices of LPC1 show that components constituting Path set 5 are relatively more important than other components. The results also, to some extent, correctly reects the topology. C. Reliability of Backbone Network and Regional Network Area 1 consists of four substations (Substation 58) of the CSWAP. Area 2 consists of three3 substations (Substation 911). The backbone network mainly involves 2 LPCs and 1 SPC. The corresponding FTA reliability models could be built referencing to Figs. 10 and 11. The indices are shown in Table IV, given . In addition, while the simulation time is set to 20 years, the availability of the backbone network is 0.995763 and that of the Area network 2 is 0.990029. It can be seen that the long-

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TABLE IV RELIABILITY INDICES OF THE REGIONAL COMMUNICATION NETWORK

Fig. 15. CFPs of integral parts and CSWAP.

Fig. 14. Overall reliability model of the CSWAP.

TABLE V AVAILABILITY OF THE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

running reliability of the system shows a tendency to descend as its service time increases. D. Overall Reliability Analysis of the CSWAP The FTA reliability model of the overall CSWAP is shown in Fig. 14, where the details of the undeveloped events are presented in Section III. The availability of the communication system, including the regional network, substation network, and LPC in Area 1 and Area 2 is shown in Table V. The CFPs of the substation, LPC, regional network, the backbone network, and the overall CSWAP are shown in Fig. 15. We just give recording data before 80 000 h for clarity. With the communication network topology and related failure rates given in this paper, the CFP of the overall CSWAP increases the fastest and the CFP of LPC increases the slowest. This index directly reects the reliability changing of the system and its components and, therefore, it could play an important role in analyzing or even predicting the reliability tendency. From the availability and CFP perspectives, the connection reliability of the CSWAP depends mainly on the following factors: the reliability of its component or subsystems, the level of fault detection and system maintenance, and the system service time. VII. CONCLUSION Based on the hierarchical analysis of the CSWAP, an FTA reliability model of the CSWAP is built. Three reliability indices and the indices calculation method are presented as follows. 1) Each part of the FTA reliability model has a denite physical signication, so it is easy to implement modular

modeling; the reliability indices reecting system-level reliability and importance of components provide reference for reliability assessment, component inuence analysis, and weakness identication; the indices calculation method based on the structure function of fault tree and the sequential Monte Carlo simulation takes failure and repair into account. It avoids several shortages of the networks method, Markov method, and minimum cut set method, such as complicated calculation and weak adaptability. 2) The reliability of the communication system in wide-area protection depends not only on the reliability of its components, but also on fault detection and the maintenance level; smaller availability and larger CFPs would be obtained while longer evaluation time is given, which basically presents the downside of the system capability to perform its required function under the given conditions with its service time increasing. 3) To enhance system reliability, the redundant structure is usually introduced in communication networks. This kind of relationship in reliability assessment could also be presented by using the appropriate gate in FTA. REFERENCES
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[10] B. L. Deusrmeyer, A new approach for network reliability analysis, IEEE Trans. Reliab., vol. R-31, no. 4, pp. 350354, Oct. 1982. [11] R. Suresh, A cutset approach to reliability evaluation in communication networks, IEEE Trans. Reliab., vol. R-31, no. 5, pp. 428431, Dec. 1982. [12] L. Wenyuan, Risk Assessment of Power Systems: Models, Methods, and Applications. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2005. [13] R. Billinton, M. Fotuhi-Firuzabad, and L. Bertling, Bibliography on the application of probability methods in power system reliability evaluation 19961999, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 595602, Nov. 2001. [14] Y. Tang, Z. Shao, C. Guo, and Y. Cao, Digital power grid architecture, Elect. Power Autom. Equip., vol. 29, pp. 115118, Jun. 2009. [15] S. Kevin, L. Chen-Ching, and P. Jean-Philippe, Assessment of interactions between power and telecommunications infrastructures, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 11231130, Aug. 2006. [16] J. Hughes, IntelliGrid architecture concepts and IEC61850, in Proc. Transm. Distrib. Conf. Exhibit., May 2006, pp. 401404. [17] X. Tong, G. Liao, and X. Wang, The analysis of communication architecture and control mode of wide area power systems control, in Proc. Int. Symp. Auton. Decentralized Syst., 2005, pp. 5965. [18] Communication Networks and Systems in Substation-Part 92: Specic Communication Service Mapping (SCSM)Sampled Analogue Values Over ISO/IEC 8802-3, IEC 61850-9-2, IEC, 2004. [19] T. Xu, X. Yin, and D. You, A novel communication network for threelevel wide area protection system, in Proc. Power Energy Soc. Gen. Meeting, 2008, pp. 18. [20] X. Yin, Y. Wang, and Z. Zhang, Zone-division and tripping strategy for limited wide area protection adapting to smart grid, (in Chinese) Proc. CSEE, vol. 30, no. 7, pp. 17, Mar. 2010. [21] W. E. Vesely, F. F. Goldberg, N. H. Roberts, and D. F. Haasl, Fault Tree Handbook. Washington, DC: U.S. Nucl. Reg. Comm., 1981. [22] D. Yan, P. Ju, and H. Yuan, Wide area measurement and real-time transmission system for phasor data under network communication mode, Power Syst. Technol., vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 1518, Feb. 2004. [23] Y.-R. Chang, S. V. Amari, and S.-Y. Kuo, Computing system failure frequencies and reliability importance measures using OBDD, IEEE Trans. Comput., vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 5468, Jan. 2004. [24] W. Yang and Y. Sheng, Digital Simulation for System Reliability (in Chinese). Beijing, China: Beijing Univ. Aeronaut. Astronaut. Press, 1990. [25] Z. Dai and Z. Wang, Protection dynamic reliability analysis system based on 3RF technique, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., to be published.

[26] C. L. T. Borges, D. M. Falcao, and J. C. O. Mello, Composite reliability evaluation by sequential Monte Carlo simulation on parallel and distributed processing environments, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 203209, May 2001. Zhi-Hui Dai (S10) received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China, in 2006 and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China. His research mainly focuses on power system protection and control.

Zeng-Ping Wang received the Ph.D. degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. Currently, he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Dean of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing. His research interests concern power system protection and control. Dr. Wang is a member of the Power System Automation Committee of the Chinese Society of Electrical Engineering.

Yan-Jun Jiao received the Ph.D. degree from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. Currenrtly, he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Associate Director of Department of Electrical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Baoding, China. His area of research is power system protection and control.