A Novel Scalable Communication Network Slicing Method with Plug-and-Play Support for Power Distribution Systems

With the rapid development of power distribution systems (PDSs), the number of terminal devices and the types of services involved are constantly growing. These trends make the operation of PDSs highly dependent on the support of advanced communication networks, which are challenged by the heavy burden of interfacing and maintaining a large number of terminal devices, the high demand for flexible redeployment of resources, and the growing risk of cyber-attacks. The traditional PDS communication network can hardly meet the above requirements. To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a novel network slicing scheme which is based on a device authentication slice. In this scheme, the sharing of communication resources and automatic network failure recovery are achieved using an adaptive network slicing scheme, which increases the resilience and flexibility of the PDS communication networks. The application of authentication slice enables plug-and-play management of terminal devices and isolation of high-risk data and devices, which strengthens network security and reduces the amount of manual maintenance in PDSs. The simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.