Power system state estimation relies increasingly on PMU measurements to ef- fectively control and monitor growing and stressed transmission networks which are also affected by transient and dynamic events. High PMU cost has moti- vated optimal PMU placement solutions but recent works have shown the effect of communication infrastructure cost in PMU configuration. In this paper, we present a new method for the design of Wide Area Measurement Systems. A topological analysis algorithm based on the Variable Neighbourhood Search heuristic is proposed and tested in several networks, including the common IEEE test networks and the 5804-bus Brazilian transmission system. Our results show the flexibility, effectiveness, and scalability of the proposed methodology when compared with recent research presented in the literature.