Large interconnected power systems are usually subjected to natural oscillation (NO) and forced oscillation (FO). NO occurs due to system transient response and is characterized by several oscillation modes

while FO occurs due to external perturbations driving generation sources. Compared to NO

FO is considered a more severe threat to the safe and reliable operation of power systems. Therefore

it is important to locate the source of FO so corrective actions can be taken to ensure stable power system operation. In this paper

a novel approach based on two-step signal processing is proposed to characterize FO in terms of its frequency components

duration

nature

and the location of the source. Data recorded by the Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) in a Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) is utilized for analysis. As PMU data usually contains white noise and appears as multi-frequency oscillatory signal

the first step is to de-noise the raw PMU data by decomposing it into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMF) using Improved Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (ICEEMDAN) technique. The most appropriate IMF containing the vital information is selected using the correlation technique. The second step involves various signal processing and statistical analysis tools such as segmented Power Spectrum Density (PSD)

excess kurtosis

cross PSD etc. to achieve the desired objectives. The analysis performed on the simulated two-area four-machine system

reduced WECC-179 bus 29 machine system

and the real-time power system PMU data set from ISO New England

demonstrates the accuracy of the proposed method. The proposed approach is independent of complex network topologies and their characteristics

and is also robust against measurement noise usually contained in PMU data.