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    Introduction To Power Line Communications (PLC)

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    Brijendra Kumar
    This document provides an introduction to power line communications (PLC) including a brief history, operating principles, legal framework and regulation, standardization, technologies, data connection, architecture of PLC devices, and network security. PLC enables data transfer through power lines using advanced modulation to superimpose high frequency signals over 50Hz power lines. Broadband PLC began in the late 1990s and the first indoor network standard, Homeplug, provides theoretical speeds up to 14Mbps for local area networks using power lines. While indoor installations are unregulated, outdoor installations require testing permits from regulatory authorities as standards are still developing.

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    Introduction To Power Line Communications (PLC)

    Uploaded by

    Brijendra Kumar
    30 views6 pages
    This document provides an introduction to power line communications (PLC) including a brief history, operating principles, legal framework and regulation, standardization, technologies, data connection, architecture of PLC devices, and network security. PLC enables data transfer through power lines using advanced modulation to superimpose high frequency signals over 50Hz power lines. Broadband PLC began in the late 1990s and the first indoor network standard, Homeplug, provides theoretical speeds up to 14Mbps for local area networks using power lines. While indoor installations are unregulated, outdoor installations require testing permits from regulatory authorities as standards are still developing.

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    This document provides an introduction to power line communications (PLC) including a brief history, operating principles, legal framework and regulation, standardization, technologies, data connection, architecture of PLC devices, and network security. PLC enables data transfer through power lines using advanced modulation to superimpose high frequency signals over 50Hz power lines. Broadband PLC began in the late 1990s and the first indoor network standard, Homeplug, provides theoretical speeds up to 14Mbps for local area networks using power lines. While indoor installations are unregulated, outdoor installations require testing permits from regulatory authorities as standards are still developing.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
    30 views6 pages

    Introduction To Power Line Communications (PLC)

    Uploaded by

    Brijendra Kumar
    This document provides an introduction to power line communications (PLC) including a brief history, operating principles, legal framework and regulation, standardization, technologies, data connection, architecture of PLC devices, and network security. PLC enables data transfer through power lines using advanced modulation to superimpose high frequency signals over 50Hz power lines. Broadband PLC began in the late 1990s and the first indoor network standard, Homeplug, provides theoretical speeds up to 14Mbps for local area networks using power lines. While indoor installations are unregulated, outdoor installations require testing permits from regulatory authorities as standards are still developing.

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    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 6

    Introduction to power line communications (PLC)

    Introduction to PLC
    "Power Line Communications" basically means any technology that enables data transfer at narrow or broad band speeds through power lines by using advanced modulation technology. Depending on the country, the institution and the company, power line communications are grouped under several different key words: PLC (Power Line Communications) PLC (Power Line Communications) PLT (Power Line Telecommunications) PPC (Power Plus Communications)

    Brief history of PLC


    Power line communication has been around for quite some time, but has only been used for narrow band tele-remote relay applications, public lighting and home automation. Broadband over PLC only began at the end of the 1990s: 1950: at a frequency of 10Hz, 10kW of power, one-way: town lighting, relay remote control. Mid 1980s: beginning of research into the use of the electrical grid to support data transmission, on bands between 5 - 500Khz, always in a one-way direction, 1997: first tests for bidirectional data signal transmission over the electrical supply network and the beginning of research by Ascom (Switzerland) and Norweb (U.K.) 2000: first tests carried out in France by EDF R&D and Ascom.

    Operating principles
    PLC Broadband technology is capable of transmitting data via the electrical supply network, and therefore can extend an existing local area network or share an existing Internet connection through electric plugs with the installation of specific units. The principle of PLC consists in superimposing a high frequency signal (1.6 to 30 Mhz) at low energy levels over the 50 Hz electrical signal. This second signal is transmitted via the power infrastructure and can be received and decoded remotely. Thus the PLC signal is received by any PLC receiver located on the same electrical network. An integrated coupler at the PLC receiver entry points eliminates low frequency components before the signal is treated.

    Legal framework and regulation


    All technology running on a defined frequency band must be part of a legal framework. PLC networks are at the same time both electrical supply networks and telecommunications networks, with the result that the authorities have encounter difficulties defining their legal framework. Futhermore, no precise regulation exists for PLC equipment and networks. There are currently works in place with the PLC Forum and the ETSI, but results have not been published to date. Therefore the installation of PLC networks is currently unregulated as regards the installations located behind a private meter (called "Indoor" or "InHome"), they are however subject to the condition that they do not cause negative side-effects, in which case the equipment must be removed. Regarding external installations (called "Outdoor") where the signal is transmitted at the HVA/LV transformer level to create local electrical loops, testing permits are required from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority so long as the technology is still in development and standards have not been published.

    Standardisation
    Only one such standard currently exists, the American: Homeplug V1.0.1 standard. This standard is only applicable for "indoor" installations and is not interoperable with current "outdoor" applications. Other standards will emerge over the coming months or years.

    PLC technologies
    Transmission channel
    The electrical supply network cabling was not tested to see if it could transport high frequency (HF) signals. One must therefore consider the constraints of this medium to ensure good transmission of HF signals without disturbing nearby devices, nor affecting the frequencies in the 1-30 MHz band, certain frequencies of this band being reserved for

    the army or for radio aficionados. All this must be taken into account in order to provide sufficient bandwidth for the enduser. Thus the problem arises of limiting the power required to transmit data while ensuring a sufficient bandwidth, and limiting the effects of noise and distortion on the line. The solution: a combination of the strongest signal possible and an optimal coupling between the PLC network and the electrical supply network. There are two coupling methods: parallel capacitative coupling on the electrical network or inductive coupling using a magnetic core. For interior (indoor) installations, the capacitive coupling is the default when one connects PLC equipment to the electrical plug, the problem therefore only arises for outdoor installations which are much more complex to install.

    Data modulation technologies


    The main challenge of PLCs is "obtaining" a bandwidth with a low transmission levels, where transmission powers are limited on the power line, or a treatment of the most powerful possible signal to overcome the restriction on transmission levels. In current solutions, two types of modulation are used: OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and Spread Spectrum modulation.

    OFDM : Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing


    OFDM transmission technology is based on simultaneous transmission on n frequency bands (between 2 and 30 MHz) with N carriers per band. The signal is shared between the carriers. The working frequencies are chosen according to regulations, others are "spread out" with the use of software. The signal is transmitted at a high enough bandwidth level and then applied onto several frequencies simultaneously. If one of these decreases the signal will be transmitted nonetheless thanks to the simultaneous transmission. The OFDM signal spectrum provides optimal usage of the allocated band due to the orthogonality of the sub-carriers. NB: This modulation was chosen by the Homeplug committee, thus all Homeplug standard equipment uses OFDM modulation. This modulation is also used in wireless WiFi (802.11a) transmissions.

    SS: Spread Spectrum Modulation


    The principle behind Spread Spectrum modulation consists in "spreading out" information over a frequency band much broader than the band actually required, with the aim of counteracting the interference signals and distortion caused by propagation: the signal merges with the noise. The signal is encoded separately, one code is assigned to each user which is then decoded when it reaches its destination. Spreading is ensured by applying a pseudo-random signal called a spreading code. The reception of this signal is seen as noise if the receiver does not know the code. As the signal is transmitted at a

    lower level than the noise, the bandwidth is low. Spread spectrum modulation is thus optimised to counteract noise, reducing the effects caused by noise. CDMA Code Division Multiple Access modulation is a type of spread spectrum modulation used in some PLC solutions. When describing the various existing solutions it can be seen that the solutions which use spread spectrum modulation tend to be narrow bandwidth applications, whereas only those solutions using OFDM to date have been seen to increase in bandwidth.

    Data connection
    All PLC solutions must include a robust physical layer and also an efficient network layer access protocol. This protocol controls the division of the transmission media between many customers, while the physical layer specifies the modulation, the encoding and the format of the packets. The access method used by PLC machines is CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance), which is the same method used in wireless WiFi networks.

    Architecture of powerline communication (PLC) devices


    Indoor architecture
    Homeplug is the PLC solution in commercial use today for indoor installations, these are ideal for extending a local area network and sharing existing broadband Internet access, mainly for domestic or small business use, with easy installation. PLC units usually come with an ethernet or USB port and an electrical plug. Minimum requirements for Indoor PLC installation are a PC with either an Ethernet card or a USB port depending on the model. Check for the availability of drivers for specific operating systems (for USB versions).

    Setting up an Ethernet unit is similar to installation for a local Ethernet cable network. Setting up a USB unit is done using the supplied drivers, a virtual network adapter is then configured just like an Ethernet local area network adapter.

    At the electric level, the installation does not pose any concerns inside a housing behind a single-phase current meter insofar as the adapters connect directly to the electrical plugs. On the other hand installation is more complex for large buildings, than it is for homes, with a three-phase entrance point and various meters, or in large buildings such as

    colleges, hospitals or administrative buildings. The setting up of a "wide area" PLC solution requires a two-fold skillset: expertise in electrical supply network and computer networking, as well as the use of hardware different from the Homeplug units sold for the indoor market. The widespread solution currently on sale, Homeplug, has a theoretical bandwidth of 14Mbps. Other solutions also exist with bandwidth ranging from 2Mbps to 45Mbps. A 100Mbps solution has been laboratory tested. Real bandwidths are reduced by the overhead required for management of the system. However, the available bandwidths are sufficient for the majority of domestic applications taking the Homeplug rate of 14Mbps as an example.

    PLC network security


    Role of the electric phase: the signal passes along the phases by induction, but the signal is rapidly weakened from one phase to the next. Role of the electricity meter: the PLC signal passes through the electricity meter, this does not however cause any barrier for the PLC network. Local area network security: any PLC network must be protected like any other local area network, through the installation of a firewall, however there are two intrinsic levels of security in PLC equipment:

    a DES encryption (using a 56 or 128 bit key) the possibility of setting up separate networks on the same electric circuit with two different encryption keys that can be configured using software usually provided with the equipment.

    Outdoor architecture
    Experiments are ongoing for external installations, with a link between Broadband Internet and the electrical mains network via a HTA/BT transformer creating a local electric loop.

    Pros and cons


    Advantages of PLC:

    Mobility Flexibility Ease of installation for indoor setup Stability Complements both cable and wireless solutions

    Disadvantages of PLC:

    Installation and high performance depend on the architecture of the electrical network Lack of standards and guidelines Interoperability problems with various types of equipment. Current price, market needs to be developed

    Conclusion
    PLC solutions may be seen as complementary or alternative solutions to traditional fixed line networks, wireless networks and VDSL networks. According to existing network architectures, buildings or technical constraints, either solution can be chosen, but one can also consider one solution to complement another! PLC bandwidths are set to increase, the Hompelug AV standard is being considered for broadcasting digital television. Many research projects are ongoing into these solutions and their applications, it is all to come, one should pay close attention to news about this technology!

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