**1. Introduction**

Due to problematic issues with fossil fuels such as the limited resources, increasing greenhouse gases, and air pollution, new resources of energy, including solar, wind, tidal, etc. have been introduced, known as renewable energy resources (RER), and have overcome environmental issues with fossil fuels [1]. One of the most prominent advantages of RER is the end of dependency on conventional power plants and a centralized electricity network, which makes them sustainable candidates for distributed electricity generation, particularly in remote places. This specification, along with the development of communication technologies that facilitate information exchange in remote places to cover control, protection, and administration requirements of this distributed grid, have led to increasing RER use in the electricity grid, especially in the form of micro grids (MG) [2]. Based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard 2030.7–2017 [3], MG is defined as a "group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources with clearly defined electrical boundaries that act as a single controllable entity concerning the grid and can connect and disconnect

from the grid to enable it to operate in both grid-connected or island modes". MG penetration is increasing, as it will decrease the cost of electricity transmission infrastructure by using RER. Corresponding to the definition of MG, there are two performance modes: islanded mode, and grid-connected mode. In islanded mode, MG should be able to work as an independent grid and supply consumers alone. On the other hand, in grid-connected mode, the connection of MG to a utility grid defeats the risk of unavailability owing to natural resource features, and offers other benefits related to participation in the electricity market as a prosumer, specifically selling over-produced electricity or buying it in the case of resource unavailability or system failure. All these advantages would not be viable without a robust communication system.

There has been a plethora of research about the optimal control, protection and management of MG [4–7], which have revealed the role of automation and smartization to achieve above-mentioned MG profit to be undeniable; however, communication structure and specification of the system are the key factors of all these scenarios [8–10]. A large number of possible communication protocols and configurations have been applied in MGMS depending on the control and protection scenarios of the system, geographical location of MG, initial investment and maintenance budget, the importance of loads, number of distributed energy resources (DER), traffic rates of the communication system, and so on. Many authors have attempted to find the best communication structure for international standards, such as the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850, IEEE 1547, and IEC 61400–25 [11–14]. IEC 61850 is a standard of the communication protocol of automation in the power industry. This standard considers communication within power system substations and uses an open system interaction (OSI) model as a communication stack for data exchange in the local area network (LAN) in its first version. It has been developed for the intelligence of the entire breadth of the power system and interacts with MG by adding IEC 61850–7–420, IEC 61850–90–7, IEC 61850–8–2, and IEC 61850–9–12. These new parts specify information models for exchange information with DER along with the definition of communication stacks for wide-area network (WANs). IEC 1547, which is a standard of interconnection between DER and electric power systems, deals with safety, protection, power quality, and information exchange requirements of DER, as well as alternative configurations for MGMS. IEC 61400–25, which is a standard of communications for the monitoring and control of wind power plants, provides uniform model information for exchanging data. These standards facilitate control, protection, and management modeling of MG. In the case of communication technology deployment, studies have categorized MG interactions into two groups: wired and wireless. While RS-232, RS-485, Power Line Carrier (PLC), optical fiber, and ethernet are commonly used wired technologies in MG communications, ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Global System for Mobile (GSM), 5G/4G/3G/HSPA, LoRa, and satellite communication are wireless ones [15–20]. Due to wireless technology advantages in comparison with wired technology, such as cost effectiveness, convenient installation, portability, low risk of ground potential issues, and scalability, an investigation into employing this technology in MGMS should be undertaken.
