Communication architectures for centralized monitoring and control of power equipment

In the past, on-site or roving personnel monitored and repaired power equipment. Today, to increase efficiency and reduce costs, there is a trend to monitor equipment from a centralized maintenance location. This location is responsible for monitoring all the equipment sites, responding to alarms, and scheduling service and repair as needed using the most appropriate service personnel. The telecommunication vendor must make many decisions when building the maintenance network. Some of the issues include: number of maintenance sites; type of central monitoring system; type of communication links; messaging protocol; alarms and data to be processed; prioritizing alarms; security; network and element failure; and remote operations. This paper discusses a general networking architecture and specific architectures using examples drawn from two different working systems: Bellcore´s Transaction Language 1 (TL-1) and Telefonica de Espana´s Sistema de Operacion y Conservacion (SOC). It also speculates on future architectures based on TCP/IP and SNMP protocols