Communication-Theoretic Model of Power Talk for a Single-Bus DC Microgrid

Abstract

Power talk is a method for communication among voltage control sources (VSCs) in DC microgrids (MGs), achieved through variations of the supplied power that is incurred by modulation of the parameters of the primary control. The physical medium upon which the communication channel is established is the voltage supply level of the common MG bus. In this paper, we show how to create power talk channels in all-to-all communication scenarios and implement the signaling and detection techniques, focusing on the construction and use of the constellations or arbitrary order. The main challenge to the proposed communication method stems from random shifts of the loci of the constellation symbols, which are due to random load variations in the MG. We investigate the impact that solutions that combat the effects of random load variations by re-establishing the detection regions have on the power talk rate.

Keywords

• power talk
• DC microgrids
• microgrid communications