Realisation of a resilient Packet-based Network over Wireless Microwave Technology

(TDM) technology to transmit data for critical services such as telecontrol, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and protection relays. However, TDM-based devices are being phased out due to technological obsolescence, and it has become necessary to migrate to a packet-based technology.

This paper is a sequel to a paper published at the 2024 CIGRE Paris Session [1], which studied the construction of a resilient packet-based network operating over a wireless microwave network. It describes the verification tests conducted using a validation environment built with actual microwave radio equipment. The requirements for the transmission equipment defined in the previous paper were re-evaluated using microwave radio equipment and Multiprotocol

Label Switching – Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) nodes, and all requirements were confirmed to be satisfied. In addition, we simulated changes in weather conditions, which are phenomena unique to wireless communication systems, and analysed their effects on network operation and communication services. Throughput and transmission delay characteristics of the microwave radio were also measured, providing valuable scalability data for future network design.

In this PoC, two operational scenarios were examined: 1) a step-by-step migration from legacy services to IP-based services, and 2) methods for efficiently utilising the limited bandwidth of microwave radio links.