On the Exploitation of Admittance Measurements for Wired Network Topology Derivation

The knowledge of the topology of a wired network is often of fundamental importance. For instance, in the context of Power Line Communications (PLC) networks it is helpful to implement data routing strategies, while in power distribution networks and Smart Micro Grids (SMG) it is required for grid monitoring and for power flow management. In this paper, we use the transmission line theory to shed new light and to show how the topological properties of a wired network can be found exploiting admittance measurements at the nodes. An analytic proof is reported to show that the derivation of the topology can be done in complex networks under certain assumptions. We also analyze the effect of the network background noise on admittance measurements. In this respect, we propose a topology derivation algorithm that works in the presence of noise. We finally analyze the performance of the algorithm using values that are typical of power line distribution networks.Comment: A version of this manuscript has been submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement for possible publication. The paper consists of 8 pages, 11 figures, 1 tabl

Wideband Impulse Modulation and Receiver Algorithms for Multiuser Power Line Communications

We consider a bit-interleaved coded wideband impulse-modulated system for power line communications. Impulse modulation is combined with direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) to obtain a form of orthogonal modulation and to multiplex the users. We focus on the receiver signal processing algorithms and derive a maximum likelihood frequency-domain detector that takes into account the presence of impulse noise as well as the intercode interference (ICI) and the multiple-access interference (MAI) that are generated by the frequency-selective power line channel. To reduce complexity, we propose several simplified frequency-domain receiver algorithms with different complexity and performance. We address the problem of the practical estimation of the channel frequency response as well as the estimation of the correlation of the ICI-MAI-plus-noise that is needed in the detection metric. To improve the estimators performance, a simple hard feedback from the channel decoder is also used. Simulation results show that the scheme provides robust performance as a result of spreading the symbol energy both in frequency (through the wideband pulse) and in time (through the spreading code and the bit-interleaved convolutional code)

GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria

Home energy management systems can be used to monitor and optimize consumption and local production from renewable energy. To assess solutions before their deployment, researchers and designers of those systems demand for energy consumption datasets. In this paper, we present the GREEND dataset, containing detailed power usage information obtained through a measurement campaign in households in Austria and Italy. We provide a description of consumption scenarios and discuss design choices for the sensing infrastructure. Finally, we benchmark the dataset with state-of-the-art techniques in load disaggregation, occupancy detection and appliance usage mining