02-08-2011, 04:30 PM
Abstract
Low voltage electrical wiring in homes has largely been dismissed as too noisy and unpredictable to support high speed communication
signals. However, recent advances in communication and modulation methodologies as well as in adaptive digital
signal processing and error detection and correction have spawned novel media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY)
protocols, capable of supporting power line communication networks at speeds comparable to wired local area networks (LANs).
In this paper we motivate the use of power line LAN’s as a basic infrastructure for building integrated ”smart homes,” wherein information
appliances (IA)—ranging from simple control or monitoring devices to multimedia entertainment systems—are seamlessly
interconnected by the very wires which provide them electricity. By simulation and actual measurements using ”reference design”
prototype commercial powerline products, we show that the HomePlug MAC and PHY layers can guarantee QoS for real-time
communications, supporting delay sensitive data streams for ”Smart Home” applications.
Keywords
Power Line Communication, Home Networks, Multimedia, Real-time Traffic, Congestion.
I. INTRODUCTION
Many next-generation appliances are being equipped with processors featuring sophisticated communication capabilities..
For instance, on April 7, 2001, IBM and Carrier announced plans to produce an air conditioner with JAVA
support that can E-mail manufacturers regarding errors, and will allow users to remotely send commands to the unit to
adjust temperatures or shut it down. “Smart Homes” will eventually have many types of information appliances (IA’s)
communicating among themselves and with the outside world. Soon, many of these IA devices are expected to have
multimedia capability. Supporting multimedia communication for these IA devices will be of crucial importance for the
intelligent homes of the future.
Providing the right infrastructure for connecting these IA devices will be a major need. For home applications, this
infrastructure must be: easy to setup, inexpensive to install and maintain and must perform well. Ordinary people are
not network experts, and a typical high performance network is too complicated for casual daily usage. The supporting
infrastructure should be as easy to set up and the effort to maintain this infrastructure should be minimal. Many existing
networking technologies compete to support this mission. For example, a comprehensive Ethernet network can be
constructed by installing UTP-5 special cabling around the house. Alternatively, wireless networks such as 802.11x,
Bluetooth, and HomeRF can be constructed by installing multiple interconnected wireless access points(WAP) and base
stations within the home. However, the IA devices themselves would need wireless capabilities, and the above three
infrastructures all require a significant effort and cost to build up the networks externally. Phone line networks such as
HomePNA[1] may seem attractive, but the convenience of mobility is limited by available phone sockets in a home. An
extensive study of other infrastructure options and technologies appropriate for a home network is given
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