Next-generation power substation communication networks:

IEC 61850 meets programmable networks

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CITATION

Gutierrez, Sergio; Botero, Juan Felipe; Gaviria, Natalia; Fletscher, Luis Alejandro; Leal, Erwin Alexander
(2022): Next-generation power substation communication networks: IEC 61850 meets programmable
networks. TechRxiv. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.20499162.v2

DOI

10.36227/techrxiv.20499162.v2
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Next-generation power substation communication

networks: IEC 61850 meets programmable networks
Juan Felipe Botero∗ , Natalia Gaviria Gómez∗ , Luis Alejandro Fletscher∗ , Alexander Leal∗ , and Sergio Armando
Gutierrez† ∗ Universidad de Antioquia, Faculty of Engineering, Calle 67 # 53 - 108, Medellı́n, Colombia
† Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana, Faculty of Engineering, Carrera 55 # 49-51, Medellı́n, Colombia

Abstract—The electrical grid undergoes a fundamental change and data models to be used in substations. An important
with the introduction of the Smart Grid; in particular, power purpose behind the introduction of this standard was to enable
substations have been evolving towards automated systems. the evolution from legacy infrastructures, mostly formed by
Power substation communication networks evolved from legacy
infrastructures mostly formed by serial devices to Ethernet-based serial devices interconnected through complex wire meshes,
digital communications networks, thanks to the introduction towards digital communication networks, based on well known
of the IEC 61850 standard. However, this evolution inher- technologies such as Ethernet, in order to enable more flexible
ited the shortcomings of the traditional decentralized network service models tailored to the satisfaction of different customer
management. This paper explores the upcoming evolution of needs [1].
IEC 61850 when it meets the ground-breaking programmable
network technologies: Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Despite the benefits of using Ethernet-based communica-
Programmable Data Planes (PDP). Here, we describe how recent tions, this technology introduces several operational issues and
proposals leverage SDN to improve network management tasks security concerns; it limits the scalability of the infrastructure
such as topology discovery, multicast traffic management, QoS
and requires manual configuration of each networking device,
provisioning, among others in IEC 61850 based systems. We also
outline potential improvements to critical network management thus increasing the complexity of the communications network
tasks in power substations using PDP features such as in- management. IEC 61850 relies on configurations such as IEEE
band network telemetry. Finally, we discuss different challenges 802.1Q VLANs and it does not incorporate security mecha-
in the management of the communication network of Smart nisms by design. Hence, the communication infrastructure of
Power Substations and how they can be addressed with the
IEC 61850 presents limitations in its scalability by relying on
implementation of programmable networks.
VLANs as mechanism for traffic segregation, and it is prone
Index Terms—Power substation communication network, IEC to security threats such as replay attacks, false data injection,
61850, software defined networking, data plane programmability
spoofing, and Denial of Service (DoS), among others [2].
Similar to the approach followed in different computer
network contexts, paradigms such as Software Defined Net-
I. I NTRODUCTION works (SDN) and Programmable Data Planes (PDP) are being
Power substations (substations for short) are a critical in- explored nowadays as mechanisms to cope with the security
frastructure element in the provision of the electricity service. and operational issues that might arise in IEC 61850 infras-
Their main responsibility is the conversion of high voltages, tructures. For example, there are some proposals aimed at ex-
present in the generation process, to lower voltages to be con- ploiting the functionalities of SDN to support the segmentation
sumed by end users. Substations are integrated by transformers required to create different broadcast domains to separate the
that perform voltage reduction, and switches in charge of multicast groups associated to control functions [3], [4].
performing protection operations. The evolution of the energy In recent times, SDN has been incorporated in the imple-
market towards a model tailored to specific customer require- mentation of communication networks in Smart Substations.
ments, and the participation of different players contributing as This incorporation might represent several advantages for the
energy generators in addition to utilities, introduces customer network management in IEC 61850 infrastructures [5]. For
satisfaction as a main challenge. This satisfaction is strongly instance, SDN can be leveraged to provide isolation and slicing
based on the information exchange among the entities involved in order to separate the different traffic types involved in the
in the process of energy supply, which depends on a set communication device, in order to provide quality of service.
of mechanisms enabling users to decide how to plan their SDN can also prioritize the traffic associated to critical events
energy demands. Hence, the relevance of the development of in the Substation and it might be useful to simplify the
architectures to better utilize that exchanged information [1]. network management due to the separation of control and data
In order to achieve the purpose of having such architectures planes. Moreover, SDN can provide mechanisms to ensure the
considering design principles as vendor independence and resilience of substations by seamlessly rerouting or duplicating
openness, the technical Commitee 57 of the International the traffic upon the failure of the control devices. On the
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) defined the IEC 61850 other hand, the concept of PDPs has emerged as a complete
standard for the specification of communication protocols realization of the original ideas introduced with SDN. PDPs
This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.
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enable the network owners to specify details of the protocols by the standard IEC 61850 is hierarchical, where three levels
to be managed within switches, and the actual treatment are identified: station, bay, and process. These levels are
to be applied to packets. These Programmable Forwarding interconnected via the process and station buses.
Devices can apply custom processing in order to provide
specific functionalities which match the needs of traffic in
Smart Substations. Despite the advantages and the possibility
to develop custom packet processing mechanisms, to the best
of our knowledge, PDPs have not yet been widely applied in
the communication networks of Smart Substations [6].
In this paper, we present a discussion on the potential that
the integration of Programmable Networks introduces to the
communication network of Smart Substations based on IEC
61850. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II presents the background on Digital Power Substations,
the architecture and protocols integrating this technology.
Section III discusses the possibilities of applying Network
Programmability on the communication network of the Smart
Substations. In Section IV we state some challenges that need
to be addressed when considering network programmability
in Smart Substations and the future perspectives for research
that we oversee from this integration. We finally conclude the
paper in Section V.

Fig. 2. Communication model for the IEC 61850 standard

II. IEC 61850 DIGITAL POWER SUBSTATIONS
A power substation is an important component in the the The process level is composed of yard equipment (Volt-
chain of generation and supply of electric power, since it is age Transformers - VT, Current Transformers - CT, Circuit
in charge of the transformation and distribution of electric Breakers - CB), measuring devices (Merging Units - MU),
energy. A digital power substation is a power substation actuators (Intelligent Electronic Devices - IED Breakers), and
that incorporates the advantages of data networks to improve time synchronization devices (Clock Master). Merging Units
operation in the areas of protection, control, communications, are devices in charge of acquiring measurements of currents
and monitoring. This implies that the operation of a digital and voltages of the transformers (VT/CT), converting these
power substation involves several IP compliant devices that analog signals to digital, to subsequently transmit them over
are interconnected through a network infrastructure based on an Ethernet network according to the IEC 61850 standard.
Ethernet technology with the purpose of ensuring a commu- The bay level, located near the yard devices, includes relays
nication platform supporting management, monitoring, syn- called Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) for the protection
chronization, protection, control, and sensing operations (See and control of the different bays. These IEDs continuously
Fig. 1). process information generated from the MUs in order to
provide a continuous and detailed knowledge of the different
events that are occurring in the substation, so that decisions
can be made at a failure event (for example, triggering an
actuator to disable a power line automatically in presence of
an overload).
The station level provides an overview of the entire SAS,
including an Human-Machine Interface (HMI) workstation
that presents the processed data to the operator, in order to
Fig. 1. Location of power substations in the chain of generation and supply
of electric power monitor and interact with the different substation processes.
At this level, there are also several devices that provide
A digital power substation is also known as a Substation connectivity to the power substation with the control center.
Automation System (SAS), where the concept of automation These three levels are interconnected through two separated
system implies that the control, protection, and monitoring physical sub-networks identified as process bus and station
processes in this infrastructure are automated. In particular, bus, integrated by Ethernet switches. The station bus provides
the substation automation process is governed by the IEC connectivity to the station level devices with the bay level
61850 standard [7], which covers almost all aspects of SAS devices and typically is implemented through a ring topology.
to guarantee interoperability of devices from different manu- The process bus interconnects the process level equipment
facturers. The standard also defines how management, control with the bay level equipment by leveraging the implementation
and protection, and measurement devices intercommunicate of resiliency techniques such as the Parallel Redundancy
inside a substation. As shown in Fig. 2, the model proposed Protocol (PRP).
 3

The IEC 61850 standard also defines four types of commu- On the other hand, network programmability has emerged
nication services: ACSI (Abstract Communication Service In- to provide flexible and customized network management.
terface), GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Event), This paradigm has been recently developed through two ar-
SV (Sample Measure Value) and TS (Time Synchronization) chitectural proposals: Software Defined Networks and Pro-
in order to ensure the correct operation of the substation (see grammable Data Planes. SDN separates control and data
Table I). planes, and provides a logically centralized control of the
network through a programmable control plane [8]. More re-
TABLE I cently, the emergence of PDPs has represented an outstanding
C OMMUNICATION SERVICES DEFINED IN THE IEC 61850 STANDARD advance in the complete realization of the SDN paradigm.
PDPs enable a complete control of the network behavior, from
Type of service Description the applications to the packet processing within the forwarding
Defined in IEC 61850-7-2, addresses the basic require- devices, including the definition and parsing/deparsing of cus-
ments for the process of information exchange. With this tom headers. As a consequence, PDPs allow revisiting existing
ACSI aim, the MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification) is functions for network management [6]. Figure 4 illustrates a
used to transport operational information for the manage-
ment of the substation between the user interface system comparison of the evolution of the architectures from tradi-
and the IED, including the monitoring processes. tional legacy switches (incorporating control and data planes in
Defined in IEC 61850-8-1 for the purpose of distributing the same device) towards a programmable environment using
GOOSE event data (commands, alarms, status information, trip
messages), between IEDs across the entire substation an SDN-based architecture using OpenFlow [9] and P4 [10]
network. based switches.
SV Specified in IEC 61850-9-2, is used to transmit analog Until recently, the main focus of SDN and PDPs were
values (current and voltage) from the MU to the IED.
traditional network environment, such as Internet Service
TS Uses the PTP (Precision Time Protocols) to ensure clock Providers, Wide Area Networks, 5G and beyond and, specially,
synchronization among devices of a distributed system.
Data Center Networks. However, due to their ability to reduce
complexity by automating network management, IEC 61850
According to the IEC 61850-5 and IEC 61850-8 recom- has recently been instilled by network programmability. In this
mendations, the communication services are mapped into context, there are several network management features that
different communication stacks according to their performance SDN may improve in IEC 61850. The inclusion of PDPs can
requirements (See Fig. 3). For example, MMS is transported also help the automation of the networks.
over IP, whereas GOOSE and SV are transported directly over To cope with the aforementioned management issues, recent
Ethernet frames transmitted via multicast. proposals have included SDN as a central element of the
IEC 61850 network architecture [3]. In fact, manufacturers of
power systems such as Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
have already deployed (proprietary) SDN-based solutions for
power substations communication networks [11].
Figure 5 shows an SDN-enabled architecture where a net-
work controller acts as a programmable control plane that
Fig. 3. Communication stack under the IEC 61850 standard
enables automated communication among the IEC 61850
architectural levels. Several proof of concept approaches have
proposed different contributions of automating IEC 61850
III. N ETWORK PROGRAMMABILITY IN IEC 61850 communication network management with SDN [3]. The
following are important management functions automated by
As mentioned earlier, IEC 61850 mainly consists on the
SDN:
digitization of power substation communication networks by
means of a transition to Ethernet-based systems [7]. Therefore, • Network topology discovery: OpenFlow-enabled switches
it has propelled the modernization of power substation com- are configured to read Link Layer Discovery Protocol
munication systems. The adoption of such systems, however, (LLDP) messages to provide a global view of the topol-
inherits their traditional management complexity. ogy to the network controller.
The variety of communications protocols (e.g. SMV, • Multicast traffic management: To handle multicast traffic
GOOSE, MMS, PTP, DNP, among others) further complicates (GOOSE, SV), automatic slices are set up by calcu-
network management. For instance, SMV and GOOSE heavily lating optimal multicast routing trees in the network
relay on layer-2 multicast, forcing network devices to be con- controller [12].
figured with a variety of layer 2 and 3 networking techniques • Prevention of switching loops: Usually the Spanning Tree
(VLAN, Grid-based Reliable Multihop Routing Protocol - Protocol (STP) is used for this purpose. However, it
GRMRP and Multiple MAC Registration Protocol - MMRP). limits network scalability as it only allows one active path
The manual configuration of these devices is error-prone between two nodes. In contrast, SDN allows the use of
and obstructs the dynamic automation of power substation optimization techniques in order to find the best group of
communication networks. Also, security and congestion issues loop-free paths, since the SDN controller is fully aware
further complicate network management. of network topology.
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• Redundancy: Upon node or link failures, to guarantee Cybersecurity

zero recovery time in critical services (GOOSE, SV), The incorporation of SDN and PDPs in the network of
the Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP) or the High Smart Substations introduces several possibilities to implement
availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR) PRP and HSR security measurements for these infrastructures. On the one
are used by IEC 61850. However, PRP duplicates the hand, the notion of logical centralization and global visibility
original LAN of the power substation, increasing the of the network provided by SDN allows the effective de-
CAPEX; and, HSR needs ring network topologies and ployment of application and algorithms that make security
special end nodes devices. In contrast, an SDN-enabled decisions such as traffic blocking, segregation or rerouting. On
strategy enables a novel zero fail-over approach that the other hand, programmable switches have detailed visibility
builds, in the network controller, two link and node of traffic and enable the possibility to perform quick actions
disjoint trees for each GOOSE or SV service [12]. on the traffic due to their location. However, despite this
• Provision of Quality of service: It is traditionally imple- advantage, a challenge for the implementation of these security
mented using Class of Service (CoS) values to assign pri- actions is the coherence and prompt response without inducing
orities to VLANs in charge of carrying the traffic, usually excessive overhead in the traffic processing. A first approach
resulting in over-provisioned networks. In contrast, SDN to enable intrusion detection inside data plane programmable
can enforce QoS policies by identifying the critical flows switches making use of lightweight machine learning tech-
and applying queuing disciplines in order to guarantee niques (i.e. Binarized Neural networks) has been proposed
their expected constraints (e.g. 3ms of delay for GOOSE showing great improvements in latency and communication
trip messages). overheads over edge network domains [14].
PDPs have been identified as the natural step beyond Open-
Flow in SDN. The ability to provide reconfiguration capabili- Congestion control
ties (the controller can redefine packet parsing and processing
One of the main applications of Programmable Data Planes
in the field), protocol independence and target independence
which is reported in literature is In-band Network Telemetry.
provided by PDPs, enables novel features such as in-band
This application consists in making measurements for the
network telemetry that allows a customized network manage-
packets within switches to pass up the information delivered
ment [13]. In power substation communication networks, the
from these measurements to the control plane. Thus, control
introduction of PDPs would help dealing with many network
plane can make decisions by analyzing this information in
management challenges, such as cybersecurity, congestion
the light of the global view of the network topology. By
control, quality of service, network infrastructure awareness,
incorporating these measurements in this analysis, aspect such
management automation, among others. Next section describes
as the congestion can be managed for example to create
in detail these important challenges and discusses potential
alternate paths that guarantee that critical messages (e.g. Type
alternatives to face them using programmable networks.
1A GOOSE messages) do not become affected by increments
in the delay due to congestion events.
IV. C HALLENGES AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
The incorporation of Programmable Data Planes as commu- Quality of Service
nication infrastructure of Smart Substations introduces several The communication among devices in Smart Substations
challenges, specially in the context of Network Management. is based in protocols such as GOOSE and SV. These pro-
Next, we discuss some of these challenges and we outline the tocols in general, and GOOSE in particular, define different
possibilities to address them via Programmable Networks. types of messages according to the information related to the

.p4
Monitor Router Gateway
...
App App App
P4 Compiler
Control Plane
Distributed Protocols .switch_code
Network Operating System
Routing (OSPF, RIP, ISIS) - QoS (RSVP, DiffServ) .p4info (e.g. NOX, POX, Ryu, ONOS, ODL)
Security (IPSec) - Traffic Engineering (STP, RSVP-TE, dot1Q) with P4 support
Control Plane
Data Plane Installing/updating Installing/updating
Packet Forwarding tasks forwarding rules switch code
Forwarding tables - packet headers update (e.g. TTL) through OpenFlow through P4Runtime
Checksum computing
Traditional Switch Data Plane
OpenFlow Programmable
Switch Switch

Network Programmability with SDN/OpenFlow

Network Programmability with P4-based PDPs

Traditional networking paradigm Network programmability paradigm

Fig. 4. Evolution from traditional networking towards programmable networks

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Fig. 5. SDN-enabled power substation communication network

events that might occur in the infrastructure. For example, for Network telemetry, where the network packets can contain
GOOSE messages, there are classes of messages with very statistics which are updated upon the processing of these
strict requirements regarding delay, since they are associated to packets within the network devices. Thus, Network Man-
critical operations in the infrastructure. Hence, the capability to agement Systems can access more accurate information in
prioritize and provide a differential treatment which can priv- contrast to gather statistics through periodic polling. Also,
ilege these critical messages over informational or monitoring the provision of ”first hand” measurements from network
traffic. The combination of SDN and PDPs can contribute devices can be leveraged to design resilience and proactive
in this challenge by seamlessly configuring dedicated paths security mechanisms based on data analytics implemented at
through devices capable to distinguish and perform expedite the control plane. By using these data analytics, it would be
forwarding of critical packets. possible to anticipate to breakdowns and react in advance to
them by enabling alternate communication paths to overcome
Infrastructure awareness critical situations such as attacks or communication failures.
An important aspect of the communication infrastructure The substation management automation is paramount in the
in Smart Substations is the resilience in terms of providing migration toward a next-generation network core. In this en-
alternate communications paths upon the failure of critical vironment, the new architecture needs to support dynamically
nodes. Resilience has been usually provided by introducing implementation of different functionalities, such as cyberse-
redundant paths, by duplicating infrastructure, which increases curity. The automatic software vulnerabilities management
CAPEX and OPEX and augments the complexity of the and security patch updates for the substation products are
network. By leveraging SDN and PDPs, it is possible to essential security measures in the communication environment.
avoid this duplicity of infrastructure. This can be implemented In the same way, critical tasks such as updating the switches’
by taking advantage of the global visibility of the network firmware of different families and the reception and execution
topology which is inherent to SDN. This global visibility, of actions according to alerts from the manufacturers must be
in combination of functionalities such as In-band Network easily managed without human intervention.
telemetry might be useful to detect in advance the degradation An open ecosystem for substation controllers and engineer-
of devices connected to the network while providing also ing tools is demanded in the current market, especially when
in advance alternate paths for the communication of critical today proprietary solutions are the common scenario. Another
devices. Thus, the continuity of the network operation can be issue of great interest is the automated policy management for
guaranteed by carefully observing the topology behavior with threat intelligence to increase the transparency of monitoring
SDN and the particular dynamics of the traffic by leveraging tasks. Additionally, the information sharing between network
PDPs. functionalities such as Intrusion Detection System (IDS) or
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) need to
be updated with threat intelligence information.
Network management automation
In the pursuit of true resilient and trust-able infrastructures,
which is vital in the context of Critical Infrastructures, the Fulfilling of Critical Time Requirements
automation of several network management operations is a Within the hierarchy of IEC 61850 messages, there are
vital need. For instance, the collection of statistics that helps different priorities according to their use cases. In particular,
to support decision making or possible forecasting of failures the trip messages (GOOSE type 1A), associated to command
or service degradation is a fundamental task. Programmable or status notifications, and the raw messages (SV, type 4)
devices can be used to implement the concept of In-band require transmission times between 3 and 10 ms [1]. This
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implies that any processing performed on the packets associ- of traffic visibility and logical centralization provided by SDN
ated to these messages must not induce overhead which alters and Programmable Data Planes in order to improve security
these time requirements. Despite the advantages introduced and resilience, but it must assure that enabling this property
by Programmable Data Planes in terms of flexibility and does not hamper the correct processing of critical GOOSE or
expressiveness to introduce custom packet processing, there SV messages.
exists a critical trade-off between these advantages and the
stringent time requirements defined by IEC 61850. V. C ONCLUSION

Particularities of infrastructure In this paper, we have outlined some elements related to

the evolution of the communication infrastructure of Smart
In general terms, there is not such a concept of ”Stan- Substations. We have discussed some of the basic elements
dard Substation”. The actual deployments might be different of the IEC 61850 standard, its architecture and operational
regarding both the topology, configuration and number of requirements, and how it addresses the communication needs
instances of devices (IEDs, MUs, Actuators), and the vendors in this critical infrastructure. We also have presented some
of these devices. Despite the fact IEC 61850 is an initiative of the research and operational challenges brought by the
of standardization, some aspects such as the actual capabilities digitization of the communication infrastructure of Smart
available in devices might vary. Hence, some particular aspects Substations, and how they can be addressed by the adoption
of the network communication such as the fields contained in of programmable networks. We consider that the combination
GOOSE/SV frames and their interpretation might be different of SDN with Programmable Data Planes provide a big oppor-
across different deployments. This fact constitutes a challenge tunity to introduce novel and effective solutions to address
since each deployment and the implementation of solutions these challenges. However, similar to the consideration of
based on network programmability need to be customized different network contexts, the definition of the actual details
according the particular elements of such a solution. of these solutions, their implication in the satisfaction of the
operational requirements and specially the trade-off between
Lack of data sets traffic visibility introduced by Programmable Data Planes and
One of the areas which might become an important land- the permissible overhead in traffic processing in the context
scape to take advantage of network programmability in the of critical infrastructures is still an open research program
context of smart substations is security. Literature presents which will get a high interest from the technical and scientific
a wide set of proposals to develop Intrusion Detection and communities.
Prevention Systems for these infrastructures [15], which might
be substantially improved by leveraging features provided by ACKNOWLEDGMENT
SDN and programmable data planes. However, an important
challenge in the development of these solutions, mostly based This paper has been supported by the Ibero-American Sci-
on Machine Learning techniques is having data sets to train ence and Technology Program CYTED (Project: 519RT0580),
the models where these solutions are built on. According and the General System of Royalties from Colombia (BPIN
to the literature, most of the approaches have been assessed code 2020000100381).
using either Private data sets or general purpose data sets not
tailored to the protocols of smart substations. There are only R EFERENCES
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Juan Felipe Botero received the Ph.D. degree in telematics engineering from
Sergio Armando Gutiérrez holds a PhD in Computer Science from Univer-
the Technical University of Catalonia, Spain, in 2013. He is an associate pro-
sidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellı́n (2018). He is currently a Postdoctoral
fessor with the Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering Department,
Research Fellow at Universidad de Antioquia, former research lecturer at
University of Antioquia, Colombia. In 2013, he joined GITA (a research group
Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana and Universidad de Medellı́n, and
on applied telecommunications). His main research interests include quality
previously he has been also part time lecturer at Universidad de San Buenaven-
of service, software defined networking, network virtualization, cybersecurity,
tura and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His research interests include
network management and resource allocation. ORCID: 0000-0002-7072-8924
Computer Networks, Security in Computer Networks, Data Center Networks,
Software Defined Networks and Programmable Data Planes and application of
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning to Computer Networks. ORCID:
0000-0003-2880-4601
Natalia Gaviria Gómez is an associate professor at the Electronics and
Telecommunications Engineering Department at the University of Antioquia,
Medellı́n, Colombia. In 1996 she received her BSc. Eng in Electronics
Engineering from the University of Antioquia; in 1999, she received her MSc.
degree in Electrical Engineering from University of los Andes, Colombia and
in 2006 she received her PhD in Computers and Electrical Engineering from
The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. Her research interests include traffic
theory, modeling of wireless networks and technical aspects application of
Wireless Technology in telemedicine. ORCID: 0000-0001-9625-255X

Luis Alejandro Fletscher is a titular professor at the Electronics and

Telecommunications Engineering Department at the University of Antioquia,
Medellı́n, Colombia. In 2001 he received his degree in electronic and telecom-
munications engineering from Universidad del Cauca, Popayan, Colombia;
the M.Sc. degree in telematics from Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain,
in 2010; the M.Sc. degree in telecommunications from Universidad Pontificia
Bolivariana, Medellı́n, Colombia, in 2011, and the Ph.D. degree in energy sys-
tems engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellı́n, in 2018.
In 2012, he joined the Department of Electronic and Telecommunications
Engineering, Universidad de Antioquia, as a full-time Professor. His main
research interests include energy efficiency of telecommunications systems,
coalitional game theory, and mobile networks planning. ORCID: 0000-0003-
1294-137X