Digital communications for protection. I. General principles

This tutorial is an introduction to the field of digital communications. The authors describe the role of digital communications and fibre optics in power system protection. The authors describe why, in power system protection, digital communications are likely to be preferred to analogue types, how analogue signals can be converted to digital form, how these digital signals are transmitted, which media are used, and how the best efficiency can be derived from the media. Finally, they look at digital networks including local area networks