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The Real-Time Relay Protection Communication Systen

based on GOOSE#
LIU Qunying1, Liu Qifang2*

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(1. Energy source science and engineering school, uniersity of electronic science and techlonogy,
ChengDu 611731;
2. China GUODIAN ashine company)
Abstract: GOOSE (GOOSE: generic object oriented substation events) is a type of communication
mode established in IEC 61850 standards to facilitate efficient and reliable communication in
substation system. The protocol stack mapping method and retransmission mechanism enable the
GOOSE based communication system to have good real-time performance and high reliability. This
paper reports the design and implementation of a communication system, which transmits data from the
source to the receiver with GOOSE protocol, for relay protection device. The design of communication
system software process, the configuration approach of the message publisher, and the design and
implementation of the thread refreshing and decoding in subscription equipment, are described in detail.
At the end of the paper, a test system in which a GE Multiline general-purpose relay protection device
is used as the message publisher, is built. The performance of the designed system is tested and
analyzed on the test setup, and the test results show that the designed communication system satisfies
the requirements of the protective device communication in reliability and real-time performance.
Keywords: The relay protection device; communication system; GOOSE; IEC 61850; real-time;
reliability

0 Introduction
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The traditional relay protection devices have single function. Cabling and ancillary
equipment are more complex, which lead high cost and low efficiency. With the promotion of
digital substation technologies, more and more digital relay protection devices began to use in
substation protection. Compared with the traditional protection devices, digital protection devices
can take advantage of existing mature communications technologies, such as Ethernet
communications, which transfer real-time data to control equipment and man-machine interface[1].
This feature of digital protection devices will improve substation reliability and efficiency
significantly.
Among the digital protection devices, communication equipment is the core of the
information exchange between devices and substation control center. Communication based on
IEC 60870 protocol, modbus and DNP (Distributed Network Protocol) are used at present[2].
With the development of communication technology, the timing and accuracy of data
communication have becoming more and more important[3]. GOOSE is a communication mode
based on IEC 61850, which can transfer data fast and reliable in the system. The core messages of
GOOSE can be flexible developed by the user, and the improved structure of publisher /
subscriber make the GOOSE message has high priority and high real-time. This communication
mode has obvious advantages. Therefore, GOOSE has been initially applied to substation
communications, such as substation remote video monitoring system based on GOOSE[4], GOOSE
test of digital relays[5] and so on.
A protection devices communications system is designed based on GOOSE communication
protocol stack model in the paper, which is validate through self-built experimental platform. On
the experimental platform[6], GE Multiline generals purpose relay products are used as the release
Foundations: national neture science foundation(No.51007006), Education department doctoral New teacher
foundation(No.20090185120023)
Brief author introduction:LIU Qunying, (1977-,female,asociated professor,research intersting:power system
stability and control. E-mail: lqy1206@126.com

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of GOOSE message, and the subscribe is a receiving program via VC 6.0. GOOSE message is
configured and packed at the release side, and a specific multicast address is assigned. Through
the hardware addresses, the message is directly mapped to the data link layer, in order to ensure
real-time of GOOSE communication and results and analysis of the communication system are
provided.
The results show that the relay communication system based on GOOSE can transfer the data
from the source to the receiving fast and reliable.

1 GOOSE communication protocol stack model

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GOOSE communication uses a publisher / subscriber structure, which is event driven and can
support the point to point communication among multiple nodes. This structure is fit for
communication situations that has large data flow and require high real-time, which is the best
structure transferring data from multiple data publishers to multiple subscribers.
IEC 61850 provides a data communication process through abstract communication service
interface (ACSI). ACSI simply provides communications service used by specific model elements,
which is a conceptual abstract interface and does not define a specific protocol stack mapping
method. It should be mapped as the specific real-time communication protocol using specific
communication service mapping (SCSM) method. This method ensures the scalability of the
protocol stack and solves the contradictions between stability of the standard and development of
the future network technology. With the development of communication protocols, SCSM are
simply modified, when the protocol stack changes, in order to achieve the decoupling between
functional and communication. Mapping process is shown in Fig.1.

Fig.1 Mapping Process of GOOSE

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In order to ensure the rapid transmission of message, IEC 61850 provides that GOOSE
messages will be directly mapped to the corresponding Ethernet type. GOOSE communication
protocol stack use only four layers in the OSI seven-layer-network-model. The message is
encoded in presentation layer by the ASN.1 through application layer, and then directly mapping
to the data link layer. In order to improve the transmission speed, priority tag packets header
structure in IEEE 802.1Q are used in the data link layer. GOOSE message transmission
communication protocol stack is shown in Fig.2.

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Fig.2 GOOSE message transmission communication protocol stack

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A communication mode with priority tag structure is conducive to the rapid transmission of
packets when requirement of real-time is high. In addition, IEC 61850 provides the core content
can be user-specific set, which makes GOOSE wide use and flexible.

2 Design of relay protection device communication system

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The protection devices communication system using IEC 61850 GOOSE as the
implementation method, and GOOSE message is realize by GOOSE communication control block.
Control block class includes control block name, GOOSE control block path, GOOSE enabled,
application identity, reference data set, version number and logo for whether need to be
re-configured or not. Input device receive analog signals and then relay protection device isolate
the signals, which will be encapsulated as control block class model.
Relay protection device is the release side. The encoded message mapping by the hardware
MAC addresses, and will be received and resolved by the subscription. System structure is shown
in fig. 3.

Fig.3 System structure

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2.1

Design of software process of communication system

Relay protection device is the released side of the communication system. Other software
will be developed as a subscriber terminal, which can be run on the control center server or
installed on the portable computer device used for tests. At the same time, the system can connect
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multiple protection devices. Device name can be realized by the GOOSE Control Block. Decoding
thread will be called to analyze and display. To ensure real-time, GOOSE messages can not be
available by TCP / IP, SOCKET interfaces.
WINPCAP is used in this design. WINPCAP is a Win32-based platform for capture network
data packets to analyze, which is a open source library. It can capture the original packet, filter
them, count network traffic and remote capture[8]. This design uses a pcap_loop function to
captures packets, which called callback function. The overall process is shown in Fig.4.

Fig.4. Overall process of GOOSE communication

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2.2

Release end

Before sending GOOSE data, the release end should complete the appropriate configuration,
including GOOSE control block name, application ID and MAC address. GOOSE Control Block
name in the LD should be guaranteed to be unique. MAC address that is multicast MAC address
will be selected in in IEC 61850 multicast MAC address range by release end management
module. In addition, GOOSE packet priority, and Ethernet-based applications such as header
structure identifier can be configured by the user directly.
To ensure the reliability of GOOSE communications, IEC 61850 provides a special
retransmission mechanism to meet the reliable requirements of GOOSE message. Firstly, a send
request is generated by the release end, and then the message such as the value of the data set is
encoded. The release end trigger a event that theres a GOOSE message need to be sent, and then
resend the same data by increasing transmission time and sqNum. Thus the reliability of GOOSE
communication is ensured. Each GOOSE message is allowed to bring a survival time parameters
called time allowed to live, which is used to determine the longest wait time at subscribe end. The
connection realized to be lost when theres no retransmission message and new event in the
allowed time. The retransmission mechanism is shown in fig.5.

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Fig.5. retransmission mechanism

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T0 is the retransmission time when theres no event occurred in a long time. When an event
occurs, T1 is a minimum retransmission time. After the new event transferred, retransmission time
is increase gradually from T2, T3 back to T0.

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Subscribe end

In accordance with the IEC 61850, TPID is 0X8100, and the default priority is 4. The
provisions of the Ethernet type code is 0X88B8 for GOOSE message. Application layer is
responsible for connecting a number of application service data unit (ASDU) into an application
protocol data unit (APDU), and submitting APDU to the send buffer. APDU is encoded by Basic
Encoding Rules (BER) in ASN.1. BER uses 8Bit as a basic transmission unit. For each
transmission value, there are three fields called TLV, which refers to the data identifier (TAG),
data length (LENGTH) and the data content (VALUE). In which data type tag accounted a byte,
and the 8-bit and 7-bit is the label type that divided into four categories. The 6-bit refers to the
format of abstract data types which is basic type and structure type. BER coding structure is
shown in fig.6.

Fig.6. BER coding structure

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Decode thread

Decoding thread is designed in the Subscribe end of the communication system, which can
improve the decoding efficiency of the system.
First, load the data decoding thread and call pcap_loop to capture GOOSE message issued by
release side, and if the capture is not successful, the thread will be damaged. Second, identify

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device name by decoding, which means the name of GOOSE message control block. If the device
detects a new name, a new device directory will be created by calling BuildTree. Finally, when the
user activates the tree node click event, SetItemText will be called to displays the control block
path, the data set name and data set values of the corresponding GOOSE message in the list box. If
a instruction that to end the progress of subscription is received, the thread will be closed to
release resources.
2.3.2

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Subscribe to decode

According to the IEC 61850, GOOSE messages map directly to the Ethernet protocol stack
without protocol headers such as TCP, UDP. The virtual LAN identification and priority structures
are added to the message. The field that independent to the APDU unit will be skip when
decoding.
The second step of decoding is process the predefined control block in the APDU, including
GoCBRef, timeAllowedtoLive, DatSet, goID, Time, stNum, sqNum, Test and NumDatSetEntries
and so on. Whether it is a test message is determined by Test. If the current value of stNum is
different as the previous, the event is determined new. In addition, the sqNum of new event is
necessarily 1, while the sqNum of retransmission is increase recycling.
According to the TLV encoding rules of ASN.1, the subscription-side structure body
GOOSEData is used to save data set values. The definition of GooseData as follows:
struct GOOSEAllData
{
int Index;
CString Type;
unsigned char Length;
CString Value;
};
GOOSEFrame_Header and GOOSEApdu are designed to save the data link layer header and
the sqNum and stNum of the GOOSE control block. Data member information of GOOSE
includes a wealth of data types such as BOOL, String, INT and so on. Different decoding options
should be choose according to the value of index. The detailed definition of the type of coding
structure see paper[11], this paper will not repeat them.
switch(GooseData.Index)
{
case 0x83:
GooseData.Type = "BOOLEAN"; //BOOL type

break;
case 0x8a:
GooseData.Type =STRING

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break;
case 0x85:

//string type

//INT type

GooseData.Type =INT

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break;
}
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3 System testing and analysis

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To evaluate the system performance and make the corresponding analysis, the test platform is
built to test the GOOSE-based relay protection devices communication system. The hardware
platform is Intel Celeron E3200@2.4GHz; 1G DDR2 800MHz, while the software platform is
Visual C + + 6.0. In order to better evaluate the system performance, wireshark is used to monitor
and record for the message at real-time.
IEC 61850 provides that the time delay should be less than 4ms for GOOSE message. The
message monitored by wireshark has a time stamp, which accurate to s level. Thus system
performance can be evaluated effectively. The portable computer is used as a subscription client.
All other non-related procedures are turned off in order to reducing the number of processes and
keep the network load is less than 25%. The test platform is shown in fig.7.

Fig.7 Test platform

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3.1

Running result

When the publishing side completes deploying, it filled information in buffer. The release
side subscribes the message and read information from the receive buffer. Whether the message is
discarded or not is determined by the value of stNum and sqNum. Directory tree is designed to
display device name that receive GOOSE message, the path name of each message and the data
set value. The list is used to display the serial number, stNum and sqNum of control block.
Running result is shown in fig.8.

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Fig.8. Directory tree and display list

3.2
3.2.1
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Performance Analysis
Real-time Analysis

IEC 61850 provided that GOOSE communication should have a high real-time and reliability.
When evaluating the system, real time and reliability are the most important indicators.
GOOSE communication uses a special achieve way and retransmission mechanisms. Protocol
data unit is specifically defined in the application layer. After coding in the presentation layer, the
message direct mapping to the data link layer and physical layer, which means transport layer and
network layer are empty. This special transmission mode can avoid the traffic delay caused by the
stack, thus ensuring the transfer and process fast.
In this paper, a portable computer is used to simulate the control center of the substation. The
subscription client software is started, and the GOOSE message is sent from the Release side. At
the same time, the message is monitored by wireshark and the system is evaluated by time stamp.
The comparison between GOOSE-based relay protection device communication system and
MMS-based IEC 61850 communication system for the same device is shown in fig.9.

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Fig.9. Performance Testing of communication system

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The results show that the average time that the subscription side communicates with the
published side via Ethernet 40 times is 0.35ms in the GOOSE mode, much smaller than the upper
limit of 4ms. The average delay is more than 1.3ms in the MMS-based client / server
communication mode. The GOOSE communication system is efficient and stable. When the
communication system is actually used in substation system, the detention will increase because
there are more network load. American Electric Power had a special study on the issue that the
Ethernet can meet the power systems real-time requirement. The results show that even in the
"worst" case, the requirement of 4ms can be meet whether connected via 100Mb/s Ethernet
through shared HUB or Switching HUB.
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Reliability analysis

GOOSE communication uses a special retransmission mechanism. In order to ensure GOOSE

reliability, the same data retransfer through the sqNum incremental and increasing transmission
time. At the same time, sqNum and stNum sign in GOOSE message can be used as a basis for
judging failure.
The initial value of sqNum and stNum are both 1. When an event occurs, stNum plus 1 while
sqNum change to 0, and then sqNum order plus 1. When stNum do not change, sqNum jump and
stNum jump or plus 1 based on the stNum of the last frame. Message may be lost when the stNum
does not equal to 1. If the stNum do not change, the sqNum and the message are the same as the
last frame, which means the GOOSE is repeated. If the sqNum is less than the previous and do not
equal to 1 or the state count stNum is less than the previous and do not equal to 1, which indicates
the message is reversed. The message is error if stNum change but the data set did not change.
While time allowed to live, if theres no new GOOSE message that means the GOOSE link
disconnect, you need to reconnect.

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On the basics of IEC 61850 in this paper, communication system of relay protection devices
are designed based on GOOSE. Take GE F35 Multiple Feeder Management Relay Protection for
example, The experimental platform is built to verify GOOSE message transmission. The results
show that GOOSE can meet the real-time and reliable communication requirements of relay
protection devices. Its an efficient transmission method that will become the mainstream of the
substation development. This communication system is relatively independent. Although GOOSE
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communication protocol stack can greatly increase the subscription to real-time decode, some
measures should be take to end the subscription to make the GOOSE more priority than other
packets.

Acknowledgements
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This project is supported by Special Fund of the National Priority Basic Research of China
(51007006) ,Doctoral New Teacher Fund of Ministry of Education of China (N0.20090185120023)
and University of Electronic Science and Technology Science Foundation for the Excellent Youth
Scholars.

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GOOSE
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1. 611731
2.
GOOSE IEC 61850

GOOSE
GOOSE
GE
Multilin GOOSE

GOOSEIEC 61850
TM774
A

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