FOX615 Multiservice Platform

Protection and control equipment in electrical substations, which is ultimately connected to utility communication equipment, is particularly long-lived. The ultimate goal of commissioning an all-Ethernet/IP network is still far away, particularly for Hitachi Energy, which link hundreds or even thousands of established substations.

A basic requirement of such a system would be longevity, with guaranteed performance as per established technologies. Unlike the full network refurbishments often seen in public telecommunications networks, utility networks evolve slowly, increasing in size and slowly migrating to new technologies in a step-by-step approach. This evolution means that high interoperability between existing and new installations as well as parallel operation of both is a must.

To learn more about FOX615, download the new brochure and the datasheet BIGO1 - IEC 61850 proxy gateway interface unit.

These days most offices grind to a halt in the face of a failed internet connection, but no industry compares to electrical transmission in being dependent on robust, resilient, and predictable communications. Only suppliers with an intimate knowledge of the industry can supply, and maintain, equipment capable of meeting that unique set of demands.

In addition to extremes of temperature, utility communications equipment is also exposed to magnetic and electrical fields, which are particularly severe during short-circuit events. In order to maintain the high levels of availability required, especially in emergency situations, utility communications equipment must offer a robust and reliable design that has proven capabilities for providing accurate functionality under extreme conditions. In dusty and remote environments, where regular maintenance cannot be guaranteed, fan-less designs are preferable.

* Supported with additional protocols
1 Deterministic network performance not as good as with SDH technology

To learn more about FOX615, download the new brochure and the datasheet BIGO1 - IEC 61850 proxy gateway interface unit.

Packet-based networks use publicly documented protocols, and utilities are potential targets, so a comprehensive (and co-ordinated) security policy is essential across the entire network.

Depending on the application requirements, different measures need to be taken, starting from denial of service protection, protection against data modification using authentication, up to encryption of confidential data, and centralized user account management. This ensures a ‘defense in depth’ approach and is supported by the FOX615 platform. Additionally, the static approach of MPLS-TP, with much fewer protocols being potential targets for attacks, and the natively integrated SDH technology reduce potential attack surfaces.

To learn more about FOX615, download the new brochure and the datasheet BIGO1 - IEC 61850 proxy gateway interface unit.

Hitachi Energy's FOX615 is a hybrid solution supporting traditional TDM (PDH / SDH) and Multi-Protocol Label Switching - Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) – the latest standard designed to address the new applications using packet-switched technology natively. The majority of existing communication networks of power utilities are based on Time Division Multiplexing, TDM, which allocates dedicated circuits to specific communications and thus guaranteeing the required communication performance parameters such as bandwidth, latency, and symmetry. New standards today are based on packet-switched technologies (e.g. IEC 60870-5-104 or IEC 61850) and therefore integrate natively into a packet-switched MPLS backbone network.

Well known features of SDH networks were left behind when MPLS was originally created for dynamic public telecommunication networks and implemented as IP/MPLS. That’s why an enhancement of the standard was required, leading to MPLS-TP bringing back those missing features from SDH to the MPLS world such as bidirectional and static channel routing or end to end channel supervision using Operational Administration Maintenance (OAM). FOX615 provides native MPLS-TP and SDH functionality as part of the hybrid approach implemented.

The combination of state of the art SDH technology and future MPLS-TP technology provides an easy and flexible way to migrate technology in a utility network. All FOX615’s which are deployed in the field today can easily be upgraded to MPLS-TP. It also allows the parallel implementation of SDH and MPLS-TP in one node, separating traffic according to their performance requirements. One further option is to just implement a pure MPLS-TP node. FOX615 today offers much more to a utility than any other multiservice platform for real-time utility communications.

FOX615 is designed to be deployed in harsh environment ranging from extreme temperatures to magnetic and electrical fields, which can be particularly severe during short-circuit events. Furthermore it includes integrated telecprotection interfaces for distance as well as for differential protection. These interfaces are designed to work in TDM as well as in MPLS-TP networks. Especially the implementation of differential protection over PSN networks imposes huge challenges, as the PSN inherent jitter has to be compensated to guarantee a reliable functionality. FOX615 can guarantee the communication channel performance required of those critical application. Additionally FOX615 provides the possibility to distribute exact Time of Day information, pass it on to end devices and can help to become more independent of any 3rd party clock source e.g. GPS.

To learn more about FOX615, download the new brochure and the datasheet BIGO1 - IEC 61850 proxy gateway interface unit.

All our Communication Network Products are fully integrated into FOXMAN-UN, including FOX615 and it’s utility-specific interfaces for distance and differential protection. FOXMAN-UN provides sophisticated supervision features, such as a graphical representation of the communication network, a view of the synchronization status of FOX615 network elements, and performance monitoring of links. In addition, FOXMAN-UN allows certain tasks, such as firmware distribution and activation, to be automated and scheduled.

FOX615 is configured using the FOXCST graphical configuration software. Intuitive user dialogs, equipment views and the ability to configure offline. It help users to reduce down time of network elements and to speed up troubleshooting. The full integration of FOX615 into FOXMAN-UN ensures easy configuration of multiple network elements, especially the Networking Package option which allows efficient and failure-save automatic configuration of MPLS-TP communication links in a network. This also allows the operation of larger networks with reasonable efforts. FOXMAN-UN’s unique ability to integrate a range of Hitachi Energy Utility Communication devices helps operators to enhance the overall performance of utilities’ operational networks.

IP/MPLS with its dynamic protocols is well adapted to the requirements of the volatile public telecom networks, which are very different to those of stable operational networks; where knowledge of channel routing is more important then load dependent network reconfigurations. Since MPLS-TP is a technology that uses network management systems for channel configuration instead of running many dynamic protocols on the node, the operation of the network and the general parameters of performance become significantly easier. This is an important aspect in the power utility environment. Releasing the network elements from all these dynamic protocols has many advantages. For example, it makes the setup, configuration and troubleshooting of the nodes much easier, it also reduces the complexity of the node itself with corresponding cost savings on hardware and the power consumption of the node.

To learn more about FOX615, download the new brochure and the datasheet BIGO1 - IEC 61850 proxy gateway interface unit.