1

A M ATLAB-based PMU Simulator

Daniel Dotta, Member, IEEE, Joe H. Chow, Fellow, IEEE, Luigi Vanfretti, Member, IEEE
Muhammad S. Almas, Student Member, IEEE, and Marcelo N. Agostini, Member, IEEE

Abstract—The use of Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data goal the PMU network and the measurement process need
in power system operation is of practical importance. These data to be clear and easily understandable, in order for the power
are currently used for real-time operation monitoring and off- system engineers to feel confident about using this data for
line analysis. Understanding of the mechanisms involved in the
phasor estimation process is necessary for correct phasor data advanced applications.
interpretation and analysis, as well as for design of advanced The aim of this article is to present a M ATLAB software
control and protection schemes. In this paper the main phenom- that can be used as a teaching tool and research framework
ena involved in the phasor measurement process are illustrated to explore the algorithms involved in the phasor measurement
using a M ATLAB based PMU simulator. process. This software can process simulated and real mea-
Index Terms—PMU, phasor data processing, power system sured signals. The main idea is to provide a software tool
analysis, phasor estimation algorithms. to better understand the phenomena involved in the phasor
measurement process, such as off-nominal frequency and
I. I NTRODUCTION unbalanced frequency operation, the influence of the complex
gains Pn and Qn in the process, and the methods used to

N Owadays Wide Area Measurement Systems (WAMS)

are being built around the world [1, 2, 3]. Despite
the different development stages and applications found in
minimize their influence.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, PMU ar-
chitectures and the phasor measurement process are presented.
different countries, the Independent System Operators (ISOs) In Section III a M ATLAB based simulator is presented. In
recognize this technology’s potential. WAMS are composed Section IV results of the proposed approach are presented.
of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), high-speed communi- The conclusions are presented in Section V.
cation channels and Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs) [4].
The main idea is to measure three phase voltage and current II. P HASOR M EASUREMENTS A RCHITECTURES
waveforms, to estimated phasors synchronized with the Global
Figure 1 illustrates the two basic commercial PMU archi-
Positioning System (GPS) using these waveforms and to send
tectures available [8]. These schemes are necessary to reduce
the resulting data to a central location (substation or Control
the effect caused by leakage phenomena. The basic block
Center) where the PDC is located.
diagrams are the same and can be divided in:
In recent years, significant research effort was dedicated
• Sampling and filtering;
to develop applications using phasor measurement data. In
• Frequency and Phasor (Discrete Fourier Transform -
particular, PMUs became an indispensable tool for post-
mortem analysis [5]. Some examples can be found in Brazilian DFT) estimators.
[6] and Colombian blackouts [7]. The main difference between the architectures is in the way
Despite the great level of the research done in the PMU the signal is sampled:
applications, a detailed understanding of the phasor estimation • Uniform (fixed) sampling rate;
process could be helpful. Compared to the traditional measure- • Non-uniform (variable) sampling rate.
ment devices, like analog current and voltage oscillography, The first architecture was the first used because uniform
or digital devices, like digital disturbance recorders (DDR) sampling simplifies the acquisition process and the signal
(where the voltage/current waveforms are directly measured processing tasks. Previous works are dedicated to exploring
and converted to digital data), the PMU device uses signal and improving uniform sampling methodologies, presented in
processing techniques not familiar to every power system [4], [5], [9], [10], [11] and [12]. Since uniform sampling is
engineer. The approach to carry out this process in estimating well described in the literature, it will be the main architecture
phasors may raise concerns for the use of PMU data for to be explored in this paper.
advanced control and protection applications, as well as the Non-uniform methodologies are not well explored in the
interpretation of the data measured for real-time monitoring literature. From the first published work [13], a few papers
and off-line analysis. Additionally, WAMS provide the base have been published regarding it [11]; and some US patents
platform for advance control and protection applications nec- are found in [14] [15]. The main technical issue is to relate
essary for the future smart transmission grids. To reach this the time-tag given by the GPS clock to the sampling clock
generated by the local power system frequency measurement.
Daniel Dotta is with the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis,
SC, Brazil. (email:[email protected]). J.H. Chow is with Rensselaer Poly-
technic Institute, Troy, NY, US. (email:[email protected]). L. Vanfretti and M. A. Uniform Sampling Phasor Measurement Processing
S. Almas are with KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
(email:{luigiv,msalmas}@kth.se) The uniform sampling phasor measurement process is di-
vided in three main parts: phasor estimation using (recursive
 2

filtering
x(t) X
x(t)
N +n N + n −1 2 − j 2π n X true
= n
X =X + ( xN +n − xn )e N n
Pn
N
Analog Analog Post-Processing
est filtering true
Filter Filter xn (t ) X n 2
X n X n
DFT Filtering* X

A/D Sampling A/D Sampling 1

Converter Clock Converter Clock ∆ω Pn
Frequency Look up table with
estimation calibration factor
Frequency x(k) Frequency &ŝůƚĞƌŝŶŐΎ
x(k)
Estimator Estimator
(Α) ǀĞƌĂŐĞ&ŝůƚĞƌ N (ω − ω0 )∆t ∆t − sampling period 
sin j (N −1)
(ω −ω0 ) ∆t  Fixed
Digital Digital (Β) tŝŶĚŽǁŝŶŐ Pn = { 2 } e 2 N - window size 
(ω − ω0 )∆t
Filter Filter
;Ϳ>ĞĂƐƚ^ƋƵĂƌĞƐ N sin ∆ω = ω − ω0 ≅ 0
2
Fig. 2. Phasor processing algorithm for uniform sampling [5]
Phasor Phasor
Estimator Estimator

X(k)
overview of the power system frequency concept is found in
X(k)
[8].
Several frequency measurement methodologies can be
Fig. 1. Basic Phasor estimation architectures [8] found in the literature. An evaluation of the frequency esti-
mation methodologies can be found in [16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23]. The main available methods are: Zero Crossing [17],
or nonrecursive) discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), frequency Least Error Squares [24], Kalman filters [25], Demodulation
estimation, and post-processing (using calibration factors and [18], [22], Phasor-Based [17],[20],[21].
filtering), as shown in Figure 2. Under off-nominal frequency The methods used in the PMU Simulator are Demodula-
operation, the post-processing layer is necessary to correct the tion and Phasor-Based. These methods are chosen because
effects caused by leakage phenomena. Leakage phenomena they presented satisfactory performance under large frequency
results from the truncation of sampled data outside the data variation and noisy environment, and are built into commercial
window. Consequently, the estimated phasor is attenuated by PMUs (phasor-based).
two complex gains, Pn and Qn 1 . Fortunately, the effects of the
complex gain Pn (shown in Figure 2) can be readily computed III. M ATLAB - BASED PMU S IMULATOR
from the sampling window size (N ), the frequency deviation
(∆ω) and the sampling period (△t) [4]. The magnitude of The software is suitable to explore the phasor measurements
estimation process described in Figure 2. The M ATLAB PMU
Pn is the attenuation factor, and the phase angle of Pn is a
simulator considers single-phase and three-phase measurement
constant offset in the measured phase angles. As the window
signals, the last one allowing positive sequence phasor es-
size (N ) and sampling period (△t) are fixed, Pn can be readily
timation. Step and ramp (frequency modulation) frequency
estimated for a frequency range and stored in a table (Block 1
disturbances can be introduced. Simulations can be realized
in Figure 2). In real-time, the frequency deviation estimation
considering off-nominal frequency operation to observe the
is necessary to take the correct Pn value.
influence of the complex gains (Pn and Qn ) and filtering
The complex gain
( ) in the phasor estimation process. The processing of real
sin N (ω+ω
2
0 )∆t
(ω+ω0 )∆t digital measurement data can also be realized. The main
Q= (ω+ω0 )∆t
e−j(N −1) 2 (1) software blocks and algorithms involved in the M ATLAB PMU
N sin 2
simulator are shown in Figure 3.
introduces a magnitude and phase angle variation at frequency The main features of the PMU Simulator are:
2ω0 + ∆ω ≃ 2ω0 (approximately) in the estimated single- • Recursive and Non-Recursive DFT;
phase phasor. The second harmonic (2ω0 ) oscillation is shown • Off-nominal frequency simulation, frequency step and
in Figure 7 (blue curve). In contrast to a static offset, this ramp;
oscillation is not easily removed. A conventional way to • Influence of the complex gains in the phasor measure-
minimize its influence is to use a three-point-average filter ment;
(Block 2 in Figure 2) [4], which can reduce the harmonic • Influence of the post-processing level in the phasor mea-
components by more than 50%. surement;
1) Frequency Estimation: During normal operating condi- • Real digital data processing.
tions, the power system the frequency is always changing. This
deviation can be small, when related to generation load mis-
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
match, or large, when considering large disturbances. Under
these conditions, the frequency estimation methodology bears The main goal of this section is to describe the performance
a key role in the phasor computation process. An interesting of three-phase and single-phase phasor estimation under off-
nominal frequency operation, using simulated data. To illus-
1 X est = P X true + Q(X true )∗ [4]. trate the phasor performance a frequency step disturbance
 3

Positive Sequence
Digital Signal Architectures 200
Without Correction
(Real or With Correction
150
Simulated) 1. Uniform Sampling
2. Non-uniform Sampling 100

Angle (degress)
50

Algorithms 0

DFT: −50

Frequency 1. Recursive
DFT 2. Non-recursive −100
Estimation
−150
Freq. Estimation:
1. Demodulation −200
0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6
2. Phasor Angle Based Time(s)
3. Zero crossing
Fig. 6. Three-Phase Positive Sequence Performance

Pos-Processing Ploting
Single-Phase Phasor
1.01
DFT
Three−Point Filter

Fig. 3. Software Diagram 1.008

1.006
Phase A - Signal Input
2
1.004

0 1.002

−1
1

−2
0.9 0.92 0.94 0.96 0.98 1 1.02 1.04 1.06 1.08 1.1
0.998
Signal Frequency
60.5
Estimated
Frequency (Hz)

0.996
60 Real

59.5 0.994

59
0.992

58.5
0.9 0.92 0.94 0.96 0.98 1 1.02 1.04 1.06 1.08 1.1
Time(s) 0.99
0.98 1 1.02 1.04 1.06 1.08 1.1 1.12 1.14 1.16
Time(s)
Fig. 4. Input Signal - Sine Wave
Fig. 7. Single-Phase Phasor Estimation Performance

is applied, after 1s, in the sine wave signal source. This

disturbance is show in Figure 4. The non-recursive DFT
and demodulation algorithms are, respectively, the estimated B. Single-Phase Performance
phasor and frequency. The window size is set to 48 points per
cycle, that is, a sampling rate of 2.88 kHz. The performance of the single-phase phasor estimation
under off-nominal frequency is shown in Figure 7.
In this simulation, the influence of the complex gains Pn
A. Three-Phase Performance andn Qn under off-nominal frequency operation is clearly
The influence of the complex gains Pn and Qn in the revealed. The average three-point filter reduces the influence
three-phase phasor measurements under off-nominal frequency of the second harmonic however a small delay is found in the
operation is shown in Figure 5. measurement. The phasor angle is shown in Figure 8.
The simulation in Figure 5 shows the influence of the
complex gain Pn in the phasor magnitude and phase. It should
be noted that the influence of the complex gain Qn , a second Single-Phase Phasor
10
harmonic oscillation, is filtered by the three-phase estimation. DFT
Three−Point Filter
0

Positive Sequence −10

1.0005
Without Correction
1.0004 With Correction
Angle (degrees)

−20

1.0003

1.0002 −30
Magnitude (pu)

1.0001
−40
1

0.9999 −50
0.9998

0.9997 −60

0.9996
−70
0.9995 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1 1.05 1.1 1.15 1.2
0.9 0.95 1 1.05 1.1 1.15
Time(s)

Fig. 5. Three-Phase Positive Sequence Performance Fig. 8. Single-Phase Phasor Estimation Performance
 4

Single-Phase Signal Input Positive Sequence

Without Correction
With Correction

0.84
1

0.82

0.5

Magnitude (pu)
Voltage (pu)

0.8

0
0.78

−0.5 0.76

0.74
−1

0.72
0.3 0.32 0.34 0.36 0.38 0.4 0.42 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75
Time(s) Time(s)

Fig. 9. Single-Phase Real Data Fig. 11. Single-Phase Real Data

Frequency Estimation Positive Sequence

69 200
Estimated Wihtout Correction
68 Reference With Correction
150

67
100
66

Angle (degress)
Frequency (Hz)

50
65
0
64

63 −50

62 −100

61
−150
60
−200
59 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 Time(s)
Time(s)
Fig. 12. Single-Phase Real Data
Fig. 10. Single-Phase Real Data

to grasp key factors affecting their performance under off-

C. Real Data
nominal frequency operation. The PMU simulator is useful
Real digital data files can be also processed by the PMU for academic and professionals who would like to understand
Simulator. In this case, three-phase real digital data acquired the concepts involved in the phasor estimation process carried
during a Hydro Generator Load Rejection Test is processed by out by PMUs. The performance of the simulator was evaluated
the simulator. The hydro unit data was recorded at 48 points using simulated and real data from 2.88 kHz measurements.
per cycle, that is, a sampling rate of 2.88 kHz. The voltage The output of the estimation process was compared with
data acquired and the frequency estimation during the fault reference traces and phasors from real PMUs. The next step
are shown in Figures 9 and 10, respectively. in the development of the M ATLAB-based PMU simulator is
It should be noted that the load rejection happened around to implement the non-uniform sampling architecture.
0.35 s., the voltage wave presents some spikes related with
the circuit breaker operation. The frequency estimation before ACKNOWLEDGMENT
and after the disturbance is shown in Figure 10.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of
Figure 10 shows the frequency behavior under disturbance.
the Brazilian Government Research Agency (CNPq) process
Following the load rejection, the frequency rises significantly
number 201249/2011-1 and Federal Institute of Santa Catarina
because the generator is operating with no load. As expected (IFSC).
there is a delay related to the actuation of the speed governor.
L. Vanfretti is supported by the European Commission
The positive sequence voltage magnitude from the phasor within the FP7 iTesla project and the STandUP for Energy
estimation is presented in Figure 11. collaboration initiative. M.S. Almas is supported by NER
Figure 11 clearly shows the influence of the complex gain through the STRONg 2 rid project.
Pn as well as a small oscillation, probably related with a small
unbalances between the generator phases. The phasor angle is
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