Responses_to_Questions_received.pdf

Solicitation # SB134117RQ0664 Amendment 0001

Responses to Questions received:

1) NB-IOT is a licensed band 3GPP Technology that has not been deployed by an US based operator. Is this solicitation proposing the building of a small licensed band NB-IOT test bed? If so, what frequencies are set aside for use?

Answer: Developing NB-IoT is a small part of this project. Indeed, NB-IoT, due to its low data rate support, may not be suitable for high bitrate rate synchrophasor information. Our initial aim is to develop NB_IoT using EMANE/Qualnet software tools according to release 14. However, our main objective is to thoroughly evaluate the IEEE 802.11ah standard that can support much higher data rates.

So, at this stage the Government is only interested in the software development aspect of NB-IOT.

2) Are other suitable technologies, like LTE Cat-M1 or Symphony Link able to be proposed?

Answer: Currently, the Government is only interested in IEEE 802.11ah.

3) Since equipment needs to be scoped, how many grid points need to be monitored, and over how large an area?

Answer: The Government is developing a software-based virtual PMU (VPMU) for our software-in-loop testbed. We expect to deploy several hundred VPMUs using the IEEE 1168-bus model supported by EMTP. For more information about our testbed, please visit the following web-site:

https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/combined-grid-communication-testbed-implementation-real-time-measurement https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/combined-grid-communication-testbed-implementation-real-time-measurement https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/combined-grid-communication-testbed-implementation-real-time-measurement