State-of-the-art in Power Line Communications: from the Applications to the Medium

In recent decades, power line communication has attracted considerable attention from the research community and industry, as well as from regulatory and standardization bodies. In this article we provide an overview of both narrowband and broadband systems, covering potential applications, regulatory and standardization efforts and recent research advancements in channel characterization, physical layer performance, medium access and higher layer specifications and evaluations. We also identify areas of current and further study that will enable the continued success of power line communication technology.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. Special Issue on Power Line Communications and its Integration with the Networking Ecosystem. 201

PLC for the smart grid: state-of-the-art and challenges

This paper aims to review systems and applications for power line communications (PLC) in the context of the smart grid. We discuss the main applications and summarise state-of-the-art PLC systems and standards. We report efforts and challenges in channel and noise modelling, as well as in state-of-the-art transmission technology approaches

Analysis of the Impact of Impulsive Noise Parameters on BER Performance of OFDM Power-Line Communications

It is well known that asynchronous impulsive noise is the main source of distortion that drastically affects the power-line communications (PLC) performance. Recently, more realistic models have been proposed in the literature which better fit the physical properties of real impulsive noise. In this paper, we consider a pulse train model and propose a thorough analysis of the impact of impulsive noise parameters, namely impulse width and amplitude as well as inter-arrival time, on the bit error rate (BER) performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) broadband PLC. A comparison with the conventional Bernoulli-Gaussian (BG) impulsive noise model exhibits the difference between the two approaches, showing the necessity of more realistic models.Comment: The 7th International Symposium on Signal, Image, Video and Communications (ISIVC 2014) , Nov 2014, Marrakech, Morocc

Performance Analysis of Discrete Wavelet Multitone Transceiver for Narrowband PLC in Smart Grid

Smart Grid is an abstract idea, which involves the utilization of powerlines for sensing, measurement, control and communication for efficient utilization and distribution of energy, as well as automation of meter reading, load management and capillary control of Green Energy resources connected to the grid. Powerline Communication (PLC) has assumed a new role in the Smart Grid scenario, adopting the narrowband PLC (NB-PLC) for a low cost and low data rate communication for applications such as, automatic meter reading, dynamic management of load, etc. In this paper, we have proposed and simulated a discrete wavelet multitone (DWMT) transceiver in the presence of impulse noise for the NB-PLC channel applications in Smart Grid. The simulation results show that a DWMT transceiver outperforms a DFT-DMT with reference to the bit error rate (BER) performance

Ultra wideband gigabit powerline communication

PhDPowerline Communication (PLC) has long been established for low data rate applications by the electric supply companies. Since 1991, the European CENELEC standard EN 50065 has ruled the use of 3 - 148.5KHz frequency range for narrow band PLC applications. Sim- ilar standard has been established by the IEEE in the US, where a frequency range of 50 - 450KHz is available. The fast growth of Internet since the 1990s accelerated the demands for digital communication services. Furthermore, with the develop- ment of in-home networking, there is a need to establish high speed data links between multiple household devices. This makes PLC sys- tems march rapidly into the high frequency range above 1MHz. Exist- ing broadband PLC system in the 1.6 - 30MHz frequency range only provides data rates smaller than 200Mbps. With the growing demand of multimedia services such as High De nition (HD) video streaming, much faster transmission speed up to Gigabits per second is required and this can be achieved by increasing the operating frequencies. Ultra Wideband (UWB) transmission in free space provides extremely broad bandwidth for short-range, high data rate applications. If UWB signals could be transmitted over the powerline channels in the high frequency range above 30MHz, data rates up to gigabits per second could be achieved. In this thesis, the possibility of implementing ultra wideband trans- mission over the low voltage indoor powerline is investigated. The starting point is to understand the signal propagation characteristics over powerline cables, in the UWB frequency range. Experimental re- sults indicate that the signal degrades at an acceptable rate over the mains cable in a scaled down UWB frequency band (50MHz - 1GHz), which provides a potential operation band for UWB over PLC ap- plications. Key component for the PLC system, a broadband Radio Frequency (RF) coupler is designed and developed, to introduce UWB signals to the transmission channel. With the channel properties and coupling unit, extensive experimental investigations are carried out to analyse the powerline network environment, including channel loss, noise and radiated emission. Furthermore, theoretical channel capac- ity and link budget are derived from measured parameters. It is shown that the indoor powerline is a suitable media for data transmission in the high frequency range from 50 to 550MHz in the home environment. Finally, system level performance is analysed by modelling the Phys- ical Layer (PHY) data transmission. The Multiband-OFDM UWB proposal for IEEE 802.15.3a standard is used to predict the transmis- sion performance under di erent propagation paths and data rates. The research work conducted in this project has proven that UWB over PLC is highly feasible for future in-home applications. With the global promotion of smart grid applications, UWB over PLC will play an important role in providing high speed data transmission over the power networks

A Comparative Study of Power Line Communication Networks With and Without Buffer

Power line communication (PLC) has recently been receiving widespread attention due to its applications in the smart grid. We present a comparative study on the call-level performance of PLC networks with and without buffer through queueing theory. The PLC network model consists of a base station (BS) and a number of subscriber stations that are interconnected with each other and with the BS via power lines. The power line transmission channels are subject to failure during service due to disturbance. A two-dimensional Markov process is used for the modeling. Performance comparison is presented through theoretic analysis and numerical results