Distance measurement over PLC for dynamic grid mapping of smart micro grids

Optimization of currents injected by distributed energy sources (DESs) in micro grids may yield a significant reduction of the operating cost of the micro grid. It has been shown that optimization is greatly simplified if an estimate of the physical distance between DESs is available but this requires an adequate measuring and communication infrastructure making the micro grid smart. In this paper we propose to integrate communication and measuring by using a power line communication (PLC) infrastructure and estimating the distance by measuring the time of arrival (ToA) of the signals in PLC links among the DESs. We revise existing techniques for ToA estimate and apply them on realistic PLC scenarios. Moreover, we propose a new version of energy-base ToA measurement that performs close to optimal approach while having a significantly lower complexity.