Several studies have reported the improvement of system stability with a doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) based wind turbines. Due to the remote location of DFIG, the local signals measured may not contain the complete oscillation information of the power system. This study describes an optimisation enabled wide area damping control (WADC) for DFIG to mitigate both local and inter area oscillations. Wide area measurement systems (WAMSs) which include phasor measurement units and synchrophasors are used for a centralised controller for damping inter-area and local oscillatory modes. The proposed damping controller parameters are optimised along with the local power system stabiliser settings for maximising the impact on system modal damping. The challenging shortcoming of WAMS based controller is the variable communication latency which can adversely affect the controller if not accounted in the controller design process. The proposed WADC algorithm addresses this issue and compensates for the delayed and time stamped error signals. The variable latencies are normalised in the optimisation algorithm in the design of controller parameters. The proposed algorithm is verified with transient simulation in PSCAD/EMTDC for the most severe three-phase faults. A set of comprehensive case studies are performed to analyse the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for the noisy, delayed communication signals. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2018