Delayed Integrity Check for IEC 61850 Communication

Abstract

Electrical substations transform voltage from high to low, or low to high for transmission and distribution, and are a critical part of our infrastructure. The state of a substation is continuously measured for monitoring, controlling and protection purposes. The state is measured in real-time using synchrophasor measurements. The IEC 61850 standard defines communication protocols for electrical substations, including a standard synchrophasor transmission. However, IEC 61850 does not properly address cyber security, leaving critical infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

In this thesis, a delayed integrity check for synchrophasor measurements have been developed and tested. The result shows that the solution manages to detect when integrity of the synchrophasor transmission is compromised, without adding any overhead or delay to the time-critical synchrophasor transmission itself.