Order Independent Switching Operations in Radially Operated Networks

Radially operated networks may be switched to change configuration in order to improve performance. Changing one configuration into another involves finding and sequencing ON/OFF switching steps. This is in general a complex task as the switching step possibilities must be dynamically investigated in order neither to create meshes nor to lose connectivity. In this paper, we propose to represent the switching possibilities by a bipartite graph and propose a procedure to determine maximum cardinality sets of such switching steps that assure radiality and connectivity for all possible switching sequences. The representation and the procedure are illustrated with a practical example.